Dark Storm: Josef's continuing story
by Purely Superficial
Summary: Josef met with his gypsy sweetheart again, but burned by her rejection, runs to the farthest reaches of the earth and hides himself not in the mundane human world or the wild Asian jungles, but in the very internet itself. He is the Cyber Carpathian.
1. Chapter 1

_Yes, hate me for starting yet another fanfic that I won't regularly update. Just enjoy what I do write. This is the sequel to Dark Rain, in which Josef meets a special someone. Dark Rain is complete and cute all by itself. Read Dark Rain before this, or you will be totally lost. _

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**Dark Storm  
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**Chapter 1**

Josef sketched, alone, in the dark, in that familiar park a mile or so from the Scarlatti Palazzo. He came here every summer, using the excuse that the alone time with traditional media helped to keep his art "grounded," but really, he was just waiting for someone. He'd been waiting here, on this bench, every summer, for seven years. She probably wouldn't turn up. She was a gypsy, after all. But he always hoped.

And being out in the warm night air certainly was preferable to staying in the Palazzo, where everyone seemed a little bit afraid of him. Many of the familia knew that he was Carpathian—he was, after all, Byron's nephew—but no one wanted to be alone in a room with him. Josef got the distinct impression that everyone was waiting for him to turn vampire.

Perhaps he'd been acting strangely for the last few years. He'd certainly matured as crisis after crisis hit the Carpathian people. He was also somewhat of an outcast from the Carpathian society as well as human. Even the human friends he had were often times half way around the world, and naturally, they inhabitied the daylight, which was impossible for him to share. Many of the children recently born to the Carpathian families had been girls, and none of the overprotective fathers were eager to have an unmated male babysit them, even one as young as Josef.

And then there was Skyler. So maybe Josef had harbored a crush for the grey eyed girl, but more than that, he knew she needed friends—real friends—male friends who weren't intimidating or know-it-all or all-powerful. He had genuinely wanted to help her regain some measure of harmless normalcy in her life, but once Demitri had recognized her as his lifemate, Josef had been jealously exiled from her company.

The elder Carpathians had also turned a cautious eye to him every time he turned a packet of art over to Alex, Aiden Savage's lifemate, and technically Josef's boss. Josef didn't work with color or texture these days. All of his work, 3D renders or graphite concept sketches, was in grayscale. Joseph knew that the other Carpathians were worried about him. Darkness was a burden that all males carried, although it didn't usually manifest until after the second century of life. It wasn't impossible to lose colors and emotions before then, however. Lucian had lost them before he was 50.

Josef knew he was nowhere near succumbing to the seductive whisper of the darkness. But how could he explain to Uncle Byron and the rest of them that colors just didn't matter anymore? It was like those otter-pops that Sarah and Falcon had bought for their gaggle of children one hot summer. The kids had tried to figure out what the red one was, not cherry, strawberry, or watermelon. They had finally decided it was just red. Red 40, to be exact. That's how Josef felt about colors. They had no more significance than numbers, telling a computer screen or printer how to reproduce them. Warm, cool, it didn't matter their arrangement or intensity. They were all equally meaningless.

At the moment, he was working on some concept art for Alex Savage's next video-game, Wild Side. It was a unique RPG in which the player could be a werewolf, were-jaguar, were-eagle, or a number of other creatures. Like all good stories, it just as much truth as it did fantasy in it, many of the character stats based on Josef's encounters with the lupine and jaguar peoples. This werewolf was howling at the moon, clutching a locket in his over-large clawed hands.

"Poor puppy," crooned a familiar, melodious voice over his shoulder.

Josef's heart, so steady until that moment, pounded in his chest. Fighting to keep his composure, he replied, "He's been cast out from his pack for a long time."

"Any hope that he'll rejoin his pack?" the voice asked.

Josef turned to look at the girl sitting on the back of the bench, his heart warming and melting at the sight of her. She looked older, and yet she looked the same. Her hair was a little longer, but still held away from her face with glittery clips. She wore pin-striped pants with a red and black plaid pleated short-skirt over them. Her top was a red t-shirt with a artistic slashes in the shape of a heart showing a black chamois underneath. She seemed to have more bangles on her right arm, gold and silver and enameled and woven, along with several rings set with natural opals and sapphires. She also wore several chains with various pendants. Her skin was a little dark than last time, but still a very smooth and soft-looking olive. And her eyes were the exact same mysterious blue-green-teal shade that reminded him of the Northern Lights.

"Maybe. We're still too early in the game to know," he said.

"Ah, yes, I've heard your name spoken with much reverence in the virtual underground. So this is for one of your games?" Kisha asked excitedly.

"It's in development," he replied, his tone cool with modesty. "I think the more important question is, are you craving seaweed?"

"I thought you'd never ask," she smiled, and it seemed to light up the dark. Josef would have enjoyed watching her smile all night. He might have even be happy to burn alive in the sun if he could only see her smile as he did.

"Then," he said as he flipped his sketchbook closed and wedged his mechanical pencil into the spiral binding. "Would you accompany me to a late night snack?" He chivalrously held out his elbow.

"I would be delighted," she replied as she took his arm. Together, they walked down to the docks to find the small Japanese sushi house they had visited 7 years before. The hostess was just closing up, but when she saw Josef and Kisha, she winked at them and waved them into the restaurant.

When they were seated, Josef took the opportunity to show off a little, and ordered in fluent Japanese the same varieties of sushi Kisha had on their last visit, salmon, eel, veggie rolls, and extra seaweed on the side.

"Well done," Kisha said when the hostess left. "When did you learn Japanese?"

"A lot of our hardware comes from Japan," Josef explained. "Korea too. When one can speak the native language, one is less likely to be ripped off."

"Like anyone would try to rip off the Belandrake and Savage families!" she cried in mock horror.

Josef smiled wryly. "Even we do not have much influence—other than our money—when thousands of miles of phone line separate us from our suppliers. But we're not here to discuss my games."

"No, actually," she said, growing serious. "I asked Gram Yagmir to bring the Caravan back to Italy so I could talk to you."

Josef's heart almost exploded with joy. That she would—

"I need you to take it back."

"Take what back?" he asked, trying to understand her words. Her mind was still foggy and shielded, and all he could glean from her thoughts was genuine distress.

"The binding words. You said something that sounded like a binding spell and it—it did something," she floundered trying to find the right words for her complaint.

Josef blushed. "I was impetuous. I didn't even get out a whole sentence."

"Still, those two words meant _something_," she insisted. "Can you translate them."

Confused, he replied, "They meant 'you I-claim,' or 'I claim you,' depending on how you translate them. The language is very old."

"Take them back," she ordered, a little desperately.

Josef looked at her as if she was crazy. The sushi was delivered to the table, but she didn't touch it. She just begged him with her eyes, those mysterious, haunting eyes.

"I can't," he told her simply.

"But—"

"Those words would only work on one woman, my true lifemate. Since we've managed to be separated for 7 years without either of us succumbing to suicidal grief, I doubt we are destined to be more than friends," he forced himself to say the words, even though he desperately didn't want to believe them.

"But something changed when you said them," she persisted. "I used to be the first one in the wagon, ready to see new sights. Now I'm the last, regretting our departure. I find myself distracted by the silliest things—"

"That has nothing to do with me," Josef said coldly. He pulled a few crisp bills from his wallet and dumped them on the table. "You want me to undo what I said years ago? _Te szabado_. I free you. That's the best I can do." He got up and left the restaurant with barely a nod to the hostess.

Josef went back to the Palazzo, but didn't go inside. Dawn was still many hours away, so he went down to the shore to work out some of his tangled emotions. He didn't have the power to call up an electrical storm, but he was quite adept at using winds to whisk up powerful waterspouts. He concentrated and brought up two spouts and then threw them together. They exploded on contact and salt water sprayed in all directions. He closed his eyes, and savored the sting of the tiny droplets on his face. When he opened them again, he saw his uncle, Byron Justicano, leaning against one of the sea cliffs with a casual ease that belied his incredible power and talent as a jeweler.

"Rough evening?" he asked smoothly.

Josef shook his head. In the Carpathian society, even though he was 30 years old and physically mature, he was still classified as an adolescent, and Byron was his guardian. As guardians went, Byron was amiable enough. But there was an uncomfortable duality posing as a powerful game designer in the human world, and then asking his uncle if he could go out with friends.

"It was Raviv, was it not?" Byron guessed.

"It doesn't matter what her name is," Josef growled softly. Kisha believed in the power of names, and had revealed several of hers to Josef. To him, she was Kisha; to the sushi hostess, she was Amaya-san; she had introduced herself to his uncle as Raviv. All three names meant the same thing; rain. He'd always guarded her name when another Carpathian was in range to eavesdrop on his thoughts. Even now, with the venomous words out in the open, he still shielded his private thoughts from his uncle.

"She finally came back and you are upset?" Byron probed further.

"It's none of your business," snapped Josef.

Byron arched an eyebrow at his wayward ward.

Josef just set his jaw stubbornly and launched himself into the air. He knew he was behaving like a petulant child, running away from the questions. But he didn't care. Kisha didn't want him anywhere near her, then he would go where no one would look for him. North Korea. Never mind that in human terms, it was an inhospitable jungle. But they were also a digital-pirate's dream haven. Occasionally, usually in his loneliest moments, Josef had thought about setting up a base of operation in Korea, away from parents, uncles, princes, and now, Kisha.

He was practical, as ever. If he, a rogue Carpathian hacker, found Korea a good place to hide, it was likely a vampire would share that opinion. In 30 years, he had barely managed to pry the fundamental methods for killing a vampire out of anyone, removing and incinerating the heart, and then the body and blood as both were toxic to all living things. He had wanted to be a hunter in his younger days, but his mother had expressly forbidden it. Now that he fully intended to leave home, he should know how to fulfill his duty in foreign lands and destroy the vampire where he found it.

He needed more experience than time would allow. So he would have to borrow some. Most the greatest hunters known to the Carpathian people were still in the Carpathian mountains, a place he dare not visit if he valued his freedom. Fortunately for him, there were some great hunters who lived away from the mountains.

So his first destination was Paris.

* * *

Gabriel eyed the young man in front of him with some misgivings. He knew Josef Belandrake as he had spent time with Skyler, but the whole video-game thing completely eluded him, and quite frankly did nothing for the young man's reputation. Now Josef stood in front of him, asking the ancient to share memories of vampire hunting.

_He thinks to use it in his video games,_ Gabriel groused to his lifemate Francesca. _Completely inappropriate—_

_I do not think so, my love_, she corrected him. _I sense his desire for such knowledge comes from the perception of very real necessity._

"Why do you want to know these things?" Gabriel demanded directly.

"Because no one else has shared such knowledge with me, and preparation could quite likely save my life," Josef explained calmly. He was expending a great deal of effort to keep his mental shields up and strong. He still felt both Gabriel and Francesca brushing against his defenses like huge whales against a small boat in the open sea. She was an ancient, and he was the second-eldest of their kind, only a few minutes younger than his twin, Lucian.

"So why not ask your uncle or other hunters closer to your family?" Gabriel wondered.

"I have discovered that those close to my family will…censor things. I am sure their intention is protection, but you understand how that protection could prove fatal in the wrong circumstances," Josef explained.

Gabriel shrugged his powerful shoulders. "It is not my call to make."

"But it is mine," Josef insisted.

"It is your guardian's," corrected Gabriel.

Josef held back the sigh of exasperation. "In human terms, I am my own guardian."

"We are not human," Gabriel informed him contemptuously. "Our kind are not considered adult until their second century at least."

Perfect, Josef thought. His next move was entirely underhanded and devious, but at the moment, he didn't much care. "And yet many Carpathian parents are forced to relinquish their daughters at the tender age of 18."

Gabriel growled at the barb. The ancient Carpathian still held a grudge against his son-in-law for stealing his precious and fragile daughter, Skyler, after a brief 4 years in his care.

_He has a point,_ Francesca grudgingly agreed. _If we do not treat our young men with the same faith and confidence we do our young women, would it be any wonder if they fall into the clutches of darkness before their time?_

"If you believe yourself mature enough to know the dark work of a hunter, then brace yourself," Gabriel warned, his tone dropping an octave until it rumbled ominously. Then he thrust rudely in Josef's mind and quickly replayed some of the most vicious battles of his existence for the youth. He poured the memories of these terrifying and violent exchanges into Josef's mind, until he felt the boy stagger under the weight of it. Then he pulled out.

Josef collected himself and bowed low to Gabriel. "Thank you. You have quite likely saved my life."

"You should know what you may face, should you follow your set path," Gabriel said darkly.

For a second, Josef's heart faltered. Gabriel knew his plans to run from the Carpathian people. Would he stop him? Would he alert his family? But it seemed the ancient Carpathian was prepared to let Josef find his own way in the world.

Josef nodded respectfully. "Then I shall leave you to rest. "

He shifted into mist and left their home. Dawn was less than an hour away, and Josef needed to feed before he went to ground. He chose a burly young man who was out for an early morning jog and only took enough blood to replenish his strength. Then he found a cemetery and settled deep in the earth under the ornamental gardens, far from coffins.

When sun set the next night, he would disappear.

* * *

Byron woke to the distress of his lifemate's family. Tasha was doing her best to detour someone who was determined to break into Byron's underground haven, but the stubborn Italian jaguar girl seemed to have met her match. Leaving a kiss on his lifemate's forehead, Byron swept out of the subterranean chamber to investigate the disturbance.

"He's the only one—" a vaguely familier voice insisted.

"If you could just wait a moment in the parlor—" Tasha redirected the frantic woman.

"No, no, no! I can't wait. The longer I wait, the farther away he is—"

"Have you informed the police—"

"You _know_ the police don't police _them_."

"I'm sure I don't know—" Tasha tried to deny.

"Tasha," Byron interjected softly. "I am here. What is the problem."

"This girl—" the beautiful woman began.

"He's gone," the girl burst out. She was Raviv. Byron had met her years ago in the company of Josef. She looked just as wild and bangled as before, but now there was panic in her mysterious aqua eyes.

"Who?" Byron asked patiently.

"Bo—I mean, Josef," Raviv explained, her tone bordering on hysteria. "He's just gone. I can feel it."

Byron took a moment to search out his bond with his nephew. Josef was indeed far, far from the Palazzo. Byron looked at Raviv with a hard eye. "Why has he gone?" he demanded, certain she could answer.

"How should I know?" she cried. "So we had a bit of a tiff—so what? It certainly wasn't anything to make someone run away."

Exasperated, Byron tried to investigate her memories of the "tiff" in question, but found her thoughts murky and clouded, nearly impossible to read. "What exactly did you say to him?" he asked, exasperated.

"I told him to take back the two binding words he spoke the last time we were together," Raviv said. "And he did. But he was mad about it."

Byron's eyebrows rose in surprise. While it was doubtful that someone as young as Josef could have met his mate, the fact that he could have retracted the binding was even more unlikely. "How did he do that?"

"He said _te szabado._"

"_I free you,_" Byron muttered to himself. The words were just words and held no power. That didn't explain Raviv's near-panic at sensing Josef's departure. For that matter, she shouldn't be able to sense Josef at all, unless she was an extremely talented psychic woman. "Why are you so concerned that you would nearly break into my resting place to tell me this?"

Raviv twisted her pinky anxiously. "I-I don't know. It just seems important that he stay here."

"Important to me? Or important to you?" he asked seriously.

She looked up at him helplessly, tears of despair welling up in her eyes. "I just—I don't want him hurting."

"He does not feel in pain or danger to me," Byron admonished gently.

"But…but…he's gone," she protested simply. A tear streaked down her cheek.

Byron massaged the bridge of his nose. "If you are so opposed to him leaving, then you shouldn't have told him to do so in the beginning."

"I didn't!" Raviv shrieked. "I just didn't want to be bound to him. I'm a gypsy! We're not the bonding type!"

"You picked a fight over two words that likely held no power in the beginning," he reminded her. "What did you expect to happen?"

"I should have known you wouldn't help," she snapped. "It was probably your idea for him to go to Korea in the first place! You don't care what happens to him—"

"Where?" he barked.

"Korea. North Korea," she snarled. "Interested now?"

Byron felt like cursing. The Malinov's had been assigned to protect Eastern and Central Asia by the prince's father, Vlad. All five had also turned vampire on that continent. Who knew what sort of traps and unpleasant things they had left behind for any hunter to sought to take over their old territory. He reached for Josef again, to order him to return to the Palazzo. But Josef must have taken a jet, because he was too far away to command. Mere communication would take more energy that Byron had at the moment.

"What is he thinking?" growled Byron.

"He's thinking about being independent for once in his life," Raviv said, almost absently.

Byron paused again, his eyes scrutinizing the girl. "How do you know?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. I just do. The same way I know he's going."

"You must have extraordinary talents to be so connected to him," he mused.

"I'm not," she denied. "We're just friends."

"I see."

* * *

It didn't take more than a few risings for Josef to secure an abandoned warehouse with an extensive basement in an out-of-the-way town. Then he had contractors come in and create the perfect fortress. He ordered computers and other digital hardware under an assumed name, Hwan Yeong. It translated to "phantom." That was what he intended to become. Untraceable. Barely visible. Yet pervasive.

When the hardware came, Josef spent several more risings personally wiring the entire building. There were traps for physical invaders as well as more elusive shape shifting snoops. He wove safeguards that should have been beyond his ability, but Gabriel's shared knowledge and the desperate need to stave off the oppressive loneliness gave Josef a focus and force of will he had never known before. He would know if a mouse crossed the threshold of his fortress. As insurance and for convenience, he set up another spell that would repel all living creatures, from humans to insects. No need to have unwanted intruders of any sort.

Then he retreated to the deepest basement, his technological heart and brain of the entire complex. While working for Alex's videogame company, he had mastered the ability to send his thoughts to wireless digital receivers, and thus manipulate the videogame far more accurately and swiftly than any human with a controller. He intended to hone this ability, invade not only videogame consoles, but the very internet itself.

He would become the first all-powerful cyber Carpathian.


	2. Chapter 2

_What's this? A timely update? Do I hear the devil's teeth chattering because hell hath frozen over? Hope you enjoy. I had a lot of fun with this one! (I hope the name changes don't totally throw you off track. For the record, Kisha, Raviv, and Amaya are all the same person.)_

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**Dark Storm  
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**Chapter 2**

Josef was busy saving the world when someone knocked on the warehouse door. Quite literally, he was working hard in the weapons systems of 3 nations to keep a vampire from gaining launch codes for atomic missiles. Honestly, Josef was surprised that a vampire had not launched a nuclear warhead at his homeland before now. If one intended to destroy the Carpathian Prince but could not get close enough to do it in person, nothing could be better than indiscriminately leveling the entire mountain range.

The doorbell buzzed again in the back of his mind. Impatiently, he mentally activated a holographic projector that would create an image at the door for the visitor to interact with while he kept the vampire busy by shuffling and looping the security protocols while trying to find a way to incinerate the thing from several thousand miles away.

"Yes?" a digital representation of a Korean butler said as the door opened.

"I has Mr. Yeong's delivers," a young boy said in halting English. It was Jie, the youngest delivery boy in the poor sea-side village. Josef employed him because his youth meant he easiest to scare into silence.

"Set them inside," the holo-butler ordered. Jie dutifully set down several boxes and held out the scanner for the digital signature. Josef spared a minute in his virtual mission to hack into the shipping company's records and make the necessary confirmations as the holo-butler went through the motions of signing the small screen. Then Jie ran out the door, the butler snapped out of existence, and Josef went back to saving the world.

Josef's energy zipped through the internet, slipping through firewalls and brushing off antivirus programs like flies. The vampire was trying to hack into an old USSR nuclear base, and so far Josef had thwarted its efforts. Fortunately the vampire was trying to use a keyboard—unaware of the possibility of entering the system directly. As Josef set up block after block, he also searched for a source of power near the vampire. He entered the nearest power plant and rerouted electrical current from several small towns, where a blackout would not be questioned too closely. More than once in the last 18 months he had incinerated a vampire from a distance using the electrical current of the building the creature was in. Josef had to deliberately break the safety fuses in the building's electrical systems, but it proved an efficient and untraceable method of disposing of the vampire.

Josef waited until the vampire was just about to crack the codes and the predictable surge of vanity caused its shields to drop before sending electricity coursing through the system to arch into the dark thing. Josef couldn't hear the monster, but knew it was screaming. He poured power through the old hardware, fusing outdated but delicate circuits as he remotely incinerated the vampire.

Josef finally drew his essential energy out of the system and back into his body, satisfied with the job. He was sweating profusely from his work, and his bare chest glistened in the cold light of the computer screens. He stood and stretched, running his fingers through his long black hair and then over his slightly scruffy goatee. He needed to trim it. He'd been tracking that vampire for weeks through multiple sites, charting his course across China and Russia. The thing was crafty—probably a younger creature more savvy with the ways of technology than an ancient. But it had been no match for the Phantom of the Web. Josef slowly ascended from his deepest basement to the ground floor, walking silently on bare feet, his hand-woven black _paji_ pants barely whispering in the darkness, to investigate the packages delivered that day.

Most of them were filled with freeze-dried camping rations, which Josef would take to some of the less fortunate parts of the country later in the month. Shipping these rations to his warehouse was a costly endeavor, but fortunately Josef possessed an intimate knowledge of the workings of Asian stock markets, and received tens of thousands of US dollars every day. North Korea, for all its propaganda and lack of cyber-laws, was still a backwards nation when it came to caring for its own people. Resources donated by the Red Cross and United Nations for the poor were often withheld for inspection and eventually found their way into the military's bottomless stomach. Josef did what he could to provide for the poorest areas, but even one Carpathian could only do so much without raising suspicion in a country as tightly controlled as North Korea.

Today there was something special though. A small package not from one of his regular suppliers. He opened and upended it. A familiar locket dropped into his hand. It was the locket Uncle Byron had provided for Josef to trade the gypsies for the hart-skin drum. Josef cracked it open, but instead of a picture of his long-ago friend, there was a small, folded note. He opened the note and read the email address:

_JuneGloom (at) Scarletti Shipping .co .it_

He smiled, something he hadn't done in almost a year. Kisha. Raviv, Amaya. Now June Gloom. All names for Rain. He shook his head. As much as he wanted to renew his friendship with her, he could not stand another rejection. Even a "let's be friends" email seemed unbearable. No, better to keep her locked in his heart, where she centered him, and his heart locked underground, where it couldn't get hurt.

Should he send back the locket? Technically it belonged to the gypsies, a fair trade for the drum he'd left in Italy. And by sending to it to him, technically he was in debt to them. But to send back something of equal value, it would need an indication of where he was, what he was doing. Maybe he would send back a woven bracelet with traditional symbols in it. It would only confirm that he was in North Korea. No more or less descriptive than an email address that could be accessed by anyone around the world.

Nostalgically, he put on the locket. It would have seemed silly back in Europe for a man to wear such a feminine piece of jewelry, but here in the impoverished parts of the east, no one cared. Then he went to his garden.

The garden was filled with exotic plants, the high brick walls covered with thorny, flowering vines. Under Josef's bare feet, springy green moss flourished in the humid evening. Slowly, Josef went through the motions of several martial arts forms he had essentially downloaded into his mind. His body needed training even if his mind could absorb information at an incredible speed. Breathing slowly, he pushed, pulled, punched, and kicked in meditative slow motion. Then he picked up speed, until, after two hours of practice, he was a blur of flying fists and feet, almost levitating in the center of the garden.

Finished at last, he went to the rain barrel mounted on top of the wall in one corner of the garden. Josef stripped off his pants, pulled a chain and enjoyed a brisk shower. His warehouse was completely off the grid. Running water was provided by gravity and his rain-collection system. Getting electricity to his warehouse had been chore enough with all the solar panels on the roof and storage batteries in a shed some 20 feet away from the main building. Internet connections were made with several satellite dishes, one on the roof of the warehouse, two more in town, and five spaced throughout the jungle. After the first monsoon, Josef had learned the value of redundancy, something he had spurned in the western world as a waste of resources.

Life was simple in the harsh jungles of Korea. Oxen still cornered the agricultural market and many people were unaware that a man had ever landed on the moon. Cell phones were a black-market item, but then again so was everything in Josef's warehouse. He had paid off many government officials and worked a web of subtle compulsions to keep the civil armies from confiscating his properrty.

His alter-ego Hwan Yeong was a hermit, albeit wealthy and benevolent. Most of the village was afraid of the warehouse, wired up like some crazy hideout from an old James Bond movie. And yet they had come to hesitantly depend on him in their darkest moments. When a child was burning with fever, one or two relatives would brave the warding spells on the warehouse to ask Mr. Yeong to bless the sick. More than twice, he had loaned a desperate man the money to save his family from the opium lords.

Josef didn't meddle in the affairs of most of the villagers, avoiding gossip wherever possible, but as he had taken blood from nearly all of them, only the young children and babes excluded, he only had to reach out with his mind to understand what was going on in the area. It was a useful way to know instantly many things he couldn't discover through digital means. It was almost like having a living security system. He knew the instant a stranger came into the village, the moment someone went missing, the second disaster hit.

It was so useful and practical, in fact, that he wondered why others of his kind didn't employ the same method. It only made sense that if one fed on the population, one should exploit the blood bond created by the action. To do otherwise almost seemed disrespectful to the donor. Surely a lasting connection was more valuable to both parties that the "hit-it-and-quit-it" relationship most Carpathians had with their prey. He remembered that Mikhail had always championed the rights and privileges of the human settlements in the Carpathian Mountains, taking those mortals under his wing as if they were his own people. But Josef also recalled confused indulgence on the part of many of the others for Mikhale's affection for mortals. Some of that had changed when it became apparent that psychic human women could be converted into lifemates, but bated tolerance for the Prince's benevolence seemed to be the best anyone could hope for.

Then the doorbell rang again, interrupting his shower. Odd. Josef wasn't expecting anymore shipments. Reaching out with his mind, he knew it wasn't Jie at the door. It was another villager. Lieu.

A month before Josef came to the village, Lieu had been raped and impregnated by an opium lord passing through. When she had gone into labor prematurely, the girl's grandmother, Momo Hue, had braved the ominous warehouse wards and begged Mr. Yeong to help her granddaughter. Josef had been able to save both mother and child. Josef had been given the honor of naming the child as the father was obviously absent. He had chosen the name Cais, which meant _of earth_.

The night after Cais' birth, Josef had gone out into the jungle to find the boy's biological father. He _impressed_ upon the promiscuous man the _responsibilities_ of fatherhood. As a result, Lieu received anonymous gifts every few months to help her raise Cais.

Josef grabbed a thick, hand-woven towel and wrapped it around his waist before he answered the door in person. He had never been particularly adept at creating clothes out of thin air, and in the middle of the jungle, he didn't care. Clothes were the trappings of the rich western world.

"Annyeong haseyo," he said, nodding his head in greeting. She was a petit thing, thin as a willow. She had short black hair and weathered hands from taking in laundry. She was barely 16 years old, but her dark slanted eyes looked more than 30.

" Annyeong hashimnikka," she replied with the most formal greeting, bowing low. She blushed to see Josef naked except for a towel. Josef felt no modesty or pride in his natural state, so he politely ignored her discomfort.

"Can I help you?" he asked in Korean.

"No, thank you," she replied, her breathing was labored, and Josef realized she was suffering the oppressive, panicky effects of the ward. It was designed to make unwanted visitors wary of getting nearer, triggering the gut intuition that his haven was dangerous. He reached out mentally to exclude her from the ward momentarily. She started to breathe easier. "I just wanted to give you this." She held up a small, red origami box.

Josef inhaled and caught the scent of what was inside. Chocolate. That's right, today was Valentine's Day. Women would give friends chocolate on Valentine's day, and then hope for something on White Day, March 14th. Lieu had probably spent a week's worth of rice money on that little box of chocolates for him.

"Komawo," he said, using the casual word of thanks as he accepted the small box, signifying their familiar relationship even if she was still terrified of him.

"It is not a romantic gift," Lieu hastily explained. "But as you are _daebu_, godfather, to Cais, it is only proper…"

Josef bowed slightly to acknowledge the honor. "I understand. How is Cais?"

"He is well. He eats so much rice mash, sometimes I think he is destined to be sumo!" she giggled, a light tinkling sound like a bird chirping before the sun rose.

"It is good he is strong," Josef commented with a small smile.

"Um…forgive me, but do you have a sweetheart?" Lieu asked softly.

"Pardon?"

"Your necklace," she reached up and almost touched the locket before snatching her hand back with embarrassment. "I've never seen it before. It is beautiful."

"Oh. That." Josef considered a moment what to say about it. "A friendly token, only."

"Ah," she said, content with the explanation. Then, uncomfortable with their extended conversation and the warehouse in general, she politely said her goodbyes and left.

Josef retreated inside and set the chocolate down on top to the boxes of camping rations. Lieu was generous to a fault, a gentle creature, always thinking of others first. She made a pittance from taking in laundry and stringing together wind chimes made of sea shells she combed from the beach. She'd probably saved for months to afford Valentine's chocolate for a few special people in town, Josef being one of them. And he couldn't even enjoy it.

Maybe Kisha would like it. That idea made him smile for the third time in one day. He quickly slipped the chocolate into a shipping box, and slipped into some real clothes. Then he went out to his protected garden and launched into the air in search of a necklace to add to the box before he shipped it back to Italy.

* * *

A week after Valentine's Day, Antonietta handed Raviv a box from North Korea, shipped first class.

"Maybe your idea worked," the older woman suggested.

"He hasn't e-mailed me, if that's what you want to know," Raviv sulked even as she hastily opened the box. Out spilled a little red origami box and a carved sea-shell necklace. She looked over the necklace first for some clue to Josef's whereabouts, but found nothing. All she could tell was that it was Korean. Then she opened the origami box. "Chocolate?" she cried in dismay. "I wait a year-and-a-half for him to come back —I scour the internet for some sign of where he is—I read every scrap of information coming out of North Korea to try to find him—just to know he's alive…and he sends me _chocolate?_"

"It is a classic gift," Antonietta reasoned.

"But it's not like he said I was fat or insulted my mother!" Raviv wailed. Disgusted, she pushed it away and ran to her room.

Antonietta sighed as she mentally relayed the exchange to her lifemate. _She is miserable without him_, Toni observed.

_I doubt he is much better without her,_ Byron mused. 18 months ago, Raviv had begged to stay at the Palazzo until Josef returned. She loved the caravan, but at the same time she loved Josef, even if she didn't want to admit it. She'd spent most of her time at the Palazzo on her computer, looking for clues to Josef's existence in North Korea. What time she didn't spend online she spent below the sea cliffs, watching the waves at night, waiting for Josef to come back. Even though she knew better than Byron even that Josef was not returning anytime soon.

_I wish we knew, _Antonietta sighed. _We know where he is, but we don't know _how_ he is. All we can tell is that he is alive._

_Josef made this choice,_ Byron reminded her. _He has declared his independence as an adult, even though I believe he is still too young. That we honor his decision is not much to ask. He knows that if he needed aid from us, all he would need do is ask._

_Does he?_ Toni asked suddenly. _Does he know that we hold his place for him? That he could return and we would welcome him?_

_How could he not?_ Byron returned, shocked. _It is the way of our people._

_And he is much like a teenager,_ she observed. _Often, stray teenagers do not know where they are most wanted._

_We were able to send him the necklace. He knows that we bear no grudge for his departure._

_We might not, but _she_ probably does,_ she pointed out.

Raviv threw herself onto her bed. Byron and Antonietta had been so generous and understanding for the year and a half she had sat around and moped over someone she didn't want to be bound to. She felt childish and silly, holding onto hope that her Bo would come back to her, forgive her rash words, and be her friend again. He wasn't coming back. That's what the necklace and chocolate meant. It might as well have come with a note that said "I'm staying away forever."

But maybe that meant she should follow him. The first meeting had been a delightful accident in the park. Their second meeting had been a terrible disaster, which was mostly her fault. She knew that now. She had pushed her panic on Bo until the only conclusion for him was that she only wanted to be a fair-weather friend. But their third meeting couldn't be any worse, right? At the very least, she could tell him that she missed him.

Impulsively, before the despair could overwhelm her and change her mind, she started to shove her meager possessions into a posh leather duffle bag. She didn't have a lot, gypsies never carried more than they needed, so it didn't take long. Then she opened up her computer and booked the next flight out of Rome to South Korea. Byron and Antonietta had given her a Scarletti credit card in case she needed anything. Then she printed out the address she had sent the locket to, and walked out the door.

She saw Tasha and her step children as she walked out of the Palazzo and waved amiably. Then she slipped out of the manor and into the night, leaving behind only the name she had assumed in the Scarletti family.

* * *

North Korea was nearly impossible to enter. Even the Caravan never crossed those borders. But she was not about to let petty politics get in her way. She flew under her Japanese name to South Korea. There Amaya stocked up on freeze-dried camping food and North Korean currency before crossing the demilitarized zone. Anyone else would have been shot on sight crossing that narrow 246 kilometer long strip of land. It was raining the day she entered North Korea and she blended so completely with the rain drops until she could pass within three feet of a North Korean soldier without him noticing her. That was her true gift; stealth.

It didn't matter how many bangles she wore, how brightly colored her clothes, she could always slip between shadows as lightly as mist. Even the customs agents had barely glanced at her fake documents. When she wanted to be, she was completely invisible.

In the first village Amaya came to, she bought a thick brown oil skin to keep out the near-constant rain and black silk shawl to veil her features. Her olive skin was dark enough to pass a causal glance if she didn't call attention to herself, but her features were far from Asian. Glamours were not her specialty and it took energy to avoid notice constantly, so she was reduced to old fashioned disguises. She had planned on hitch-hiking north to Josef's village, but not a single car passed her on the first day.

The second day, she managed to flag down a man with an ox and cart. She paid him a little money—he wouldn't accept more than a few bills—and spent the afternoon trying to hold her bones together as they rattled and rumbled down the path.

The third day, Amaya decided that walking was the safest way to travel. It took a total of 9 long days of careful hiking, keeping to the coastal ox-paths, buying small amounts of rice and fish when her supplies got too low. Twice she had a close call when a Korean Soldier suspiciously glanced her way, but she hunched over in her oilskin and avoided detection. Finally, she reached Najin, the only city that was close to where Josef had hidden himself.

She spent her tenth day discretely asking a few people if they knew of a white man in the area. Almost everyone looked at her like she was crazy.

"Ye, ye!" the last girl said in breathy, heavily accented English. She was a stick figure of a girl, and Amaya was half afraid she would blow away before she could relay any directions. "Mista Hwan Yeong. I know him."

"Can you take me to him?" Amaya begged.

"Ani—no," the girl said regretfully. "He is privately."

"He'll want to see me," Amaya assured her.

"Ani, ani," the girl repeated. "He is privately."

"He's my boyfriend," Amaya tried desperately.

The girl's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Moggeol-i ne? Yours?"

"What?" Amaya was getting exasperated.

The girl tugged on a battered pendant strung on a faded silk cord around her neck. "Moggeol-i. Moggeol-i."

"Necklace?" Amaya guessed, touching her own silver chains and the shell necklace Josef had sent her.

"Ye. Neck-ace. Yours?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, grasping at straws. "Ye—moggeol-i mine."

"I take you," the girl said. She looked up at the darkening sky. "Quickly." She started walking down the road and Amaya followed her. They walked in silence as darkness fell. Oddly, as the light receded, Amaya's spirits lifted. She was getting closer and closer to Josef. She didn't think about what would happen once they faced each other. Her only concern was getting to him to apologize.

They walked for an hour after sunset until they came to a dirt track that seemed to disapear into the jungle.

"Mista Hwan Yeong," the girl said as she pointed up the path.

"He's up there?" Amaya demanded.

"Ye, ye. Mista Hwan Yeong," she gestured again.

"Are you going to come with me?" Amaya asked, suddenly nervous about the dark path.

The girl shook her head and walked away.

"Wait—what's your name?" Amaya called, stalling for time. The girl didn't even turn around. Amaya gathered up every ounce of courage and took the first step onto the path.


	3. Chapter 3

_Yes, YES! Another chapter! I'm setting a dangerous precedent by posting nearly every day this week, but I'm having so much fun with this rather unorthodox scenario. Even though I'm breaking away from the standard Carpathian MO, I hope you enjoy this! As always, reviews are encouraged!  
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* * *

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**Dark Storm  
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**Chapter 3**

Josef knew it was Kisha at the door, even before she knocked. He had sensed her through Lieu. It was he who persuaded Lieu to lead Kisha to the warehouse path. He wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't turn her away, but what sort of welcome could he offer? Life had been bleak in her absence. He had not completely lost colors yet, but everything was washed out, like an old photograph. Emotions were not completely gone, but only the strongest perked his interest at all. He hadn't even realized how far he was gone until he had heard Kisha's soft voice asking Lieu about a white man living in the area.

He loved her. Whether or not she was his true lifemate, he loved her. The time he had spent away from Kisha only confirmed that in his mind and heart. Maybe that was a betrayal of the woman he would meet in several century's time, but at the moment, some future mystery mate was frankly the last thing he cared about.

Kisha knocked again. Josef pushed down hope, squashing it to a dark corner in his mind. Hiding back behind some hardware, he mentally released the locks on the door and activated the holo-butler. He also dimmed the warding spell around Kisha to minimize her reasons for leaving—not that he should expect her to stay, he told himself.

"Come in," the glowing image called.

Cautiously, Kisha opened the door. She saw the hologram and disappointment filled her eyes. She could tell by the echoes that there was no 3-dimentional person in front of her, just an image set up to fool the ignorant. Still, she asked, "Are you Hwan Yeong?"

Josef manipulated the hologram's speech with his mind. "No," it said. "Mr. Yeong is not in, at the moment. May I take a message?"

"I—tell him—my name is—" Kisha stammered. Then she took a breath, balled her hands into fists with conviction, and replied firmly, "I'll wait for him."

"He will not be back for some time," the hologram warned.

"Doesn't matter. I've come this far looking for him, I'm not going to leave now," she explained.

"Why did you seek him?" the image asked, tilting his head to the side thoughtfully.

"To apologize, I guess. But what do you care?" she demanded. "You're just a projection."

The butler straightened up and said seriously, "I am Mr. Yeong's digital aid. What I know, he knows."

"So he has a direct connection to you?" she demanded.

It nodded.

"Bo—I'm so sorry!" she cried, looking deep into the hologram's face, searching for some connection to Josef. "I was so stupid and selfish—over nothing. It doesn't matter if those little words bound us or not. I wasn't dragging my feet because of the words. I was losing my wander-lust because I found what I was looking for—a best friend. You are the best friend I've ever had. You're the one I could spend years and years with, and never get bored. And we haven't even spent that much time together yet. It's crazy, I know, but I'd chase you to the ends of the earth if I thought there was a chance you might feel the same."

"I do," Josef said from the darkness. He hadn't meant to make the confession, but it had slipped out of his heart as a sigh into the darkness.

"Bo?" Kisha ventured, looking beyond the holographic butler. "Josef? Are you there?"

"Yes," came the reply.

"Please," she begged as a sob caught in her throat. "I'm sorry—"

Suddenly his arms were around her and she was crying into his bare chest. He didn't say anything, but his embrace spoke volumes. She felt so cherished and loved when she was pressed close to him, even as she wept. So many months of misery drained out of her onto his skin. He closed his eyes against the glowing colors of the night, the tiny rainbow of lights from his equipment stinging his eyes. Joy and love and admiration for her courage all swelled up in his heart until he thought it might burst.

"Why didn't you come home?" she sobbed and pounded on his well-formed chest with a small fist.

"I didn't have a home. It was a jail house, where everyone was just waiting for me to turn vampire," he answered, unperturbed by her strike.

"Uncle Byron and Aunt Toni—" she started.

"—knew I could take care of myself," he finished the sentence for her.

"What about me?" she demanded, looking up at his chiseled features and the scruffy goatee that made him seem rakish and sexy.

"I didn't think you wanted me," he admitted.

"I didn't know what I wanted!" she cried. "Why did you leave me? I couldn't find you!"

"But you did find me," he whispered, his hot breath brushing her ear in the most erotic way. "When you were ready, you found me. You saved me."

She snorted even as she burrowed closer into his chest. "You don't look much in the need of saving."

He squeezed her close and replied teasingly. "Show's how much you know."

Kisha smiled against his skin, enjoying the hot friction with his hard chest. "You are pretty hopeless without me."

"I was desolate without you," he confessed. He felt like he was holding onto fire, Kisha's touch enflamed him so. He leaned over to inhale the scent of her hair. It was obvious that she hadn't bathed in over a week, but she still smelled delectable.

"You can stop sniffing me, now," she mocked as she tried to pull out of his embrace. "I know I stink."

"You don't stink," he corrected gently.

"Liar," she laughed.

"It wouldn't be a bad thing if you took a shower," he amended, and swept her into his arms like a damsel in distress.

Cradling her like a precious treasure, he took her back to his secret garden and the rain-barrel shower. Without warning, he pulled the chain and drenched them both in cool rain water. She shrieked and squirmed, but he held onto her tightly, her writhing only enflaming his body more. He was surprised the water droplets didn't sizzle on his burning skin.

"Aww, now we're soaked," he said, not a trace of remorse in his voice when he finally set her on her feet. "What do you say we get out of these wet clothes?"

She glared at him and pulled her shirt over her head. Just that fast, her mood changed from vengeful to lustful. Standing in front of him in patchy jeans and a black cotton bra, she looked up at him seductively through her long lashes.

Josef nearly melted on the spot. He felt like his blood had turned to molten lava. It was all he could do to keep from exploding as Kisha rubbed against him like a wet, sexy cat. He bent his head to capture her mouth in a long, addicting kiss. They barely came up for air as they removed each other's clothes before nearly collapsing onto the soft moss that covered the garden ground, tangled in each other's limbs.

They made love long into the night, the early spring air doing nothing to cool their passions. As they came together, Josef felt the insistent compulsion to speak the binding words, but held them back. He didn't want to ruin the night by starting a fight. He also felt the desire to take her blood, but he closed his eyes and kept his fang sheathed. It was too perfect and beautiful a moment to force something as serious and heavy as a Carpathian mating ritual.

Finally, spent and glowing with endorphins, they reclined in the damp moss, completely naked, wrapped in each other's arms. Neither wanted to speak, afraid to break their truce. Josef felt complete for the first time in his life. He felt accepted for who he was, goofy faults and all. He felt like he held the universe in his arms, and she was beautiful beyond words.

Kisha felt like she was home. There were no other words for this incredible sensation. It was like the whole world was at her doorstep, but she never wanted to leave the shelter of his body.

"So," she finally sighed.

"So," he agreed.

"So is there anything else?" she asked, innocently looking up at the dark, starry sky.

Josef started at the question. "What could possibly be missing when I have you in my arms?"

"I don't know how your kind does these sort of things," she admitted. "But in my caravan, that usually constitutes an unofficial marriage."

"What makes it official?" he wondered.

"Announcing the act before witnesses," she answered.

Josef laughed. "Should I make a banner and fly it over the entire Asian continent?"

Kisha sat up to look him in the eyes. "You would really do that? Announce our marriage to the world?"

"If I thought there was alien life out there, I'd broadcast it into space as well," he assured her. "I want to spend the rest of my life feeling like this, with you in my arms."

"What about the whole lifemate thing?" she asked softly. "What if you meet some other woman, years from now, and…love her more than you do me?" she ended with a terrified whisper. Josef wasn't much older than she was—not even fully mature by the measure of his race. Byron and Antonietta, as generous and gracious as they had been, made it clear to her that any romance with Josef would just be a passing fling. The Carpathian people wouldn't accept a marriage this young.

"Impossible," he replied with absolute certainty. "You _are_ my lifemate. Those two words I spoke to you might have bound us—or they might not have. Maybe our souls knew anyway and that's why we missed each other so much."

"But…but you're not old enough to have a lifemate," she spluttered, trying desperately to keep the situation at arm's length. Women slept with sexy men all the time, and young Carpathian men weren't above taking human lovers. Hadn't that one singer, Barak, been a total playboy before he settled down? Just because she was completely twitter-pated over Josef didn't mean she had to manipulate him into marriage. Even if the thought of him with another woman made her sick to her stomach, she wouldn't push him into this.

"Our bodies and souls beg to differ," Josef pointed out as he trailed a hand down her beautiful, luscious curves, sending sparks of pleasure and lust through both of them.

"But—"

He paused her next words by laying a finger across her lips. Then he traced those perfect, kissable, delicious lips, memorizing every couture. "Who would separate us? Who _could_ separate us?"

Kisha smiled, and Josef traced the new shape of her mouth. Anywhere he went, she would follow. Anywhere she was, he would be right by her e,side. That's what love is all about.

"I claim you as my lifemate," he whispered to her, intimately. He instantly felt the rightness of the words. She gasped as she felt the words taking hold. " I belong to you; I offer my life for you. I give you my protection, my allegiance, my heart, my soul, and my body. I take into my keeping the same that is yours. Your life, happiness and welfare will be cherished and placed above my own for all time. You are my lifemate, bound to me for all eternity and always in my care."

Unlike many males of his kind, Josef's soul had not yet been scarred and stained by centuries of darkness, but he was still woefully incomplete. Until this moment. Kisha felt it too. They were at home and at peace in each other's embrace. To hell with the perceptions of the elders. This love would not be wasted with youth. They knew better than anyone else that they were perfect for one another. They fit together, and yet they had so much growth ahead, it would be so exciting see what life held in store for them.

"So are you going to convert me?" she ventured.

"How do you know about that?" he wanted to know. He had heard of the horrors of conversion from other Carpathians. It was the last thing he wanted for her.

"Antonietta," she replied smugly.

"Not tonight," he answered firmly, trying not to give away his nervousness. "Dawn is a few hours away, and I still need to patrol the world wide web."

"So you're the Phantom of the Web. The mysterious third option in the binary code," she sighed as she snuggled back into his embrace. She fit so perfectly in the crook of his shoulder, she wondered that she'd ever denied wanting this.

"Hwan Yeong. The Phantom," he confirmed.

"That is such a cheesy name," she teased. "You couldn't come up with something better?"

"I thought it was quite dramatic," he defended himself. "Very operatic."

"Do you realize that the U.S., Russia, Japan, the British Commonwealth and India are all terrified of you?" she mentioned casually, but with some small measure of pride in his abilities. "You're the new super-hacker and they don't know how to keep you out."

"They should be afraid," he growled with satisfaction. "I've seen the insides of their deepest, darkest hard drives. I could bring down civilization as we know it."

"So is that why you stayed in North Korea? Because they can't get you here?" she wondered.

"The people here need me, too," he reminded her. "Since the Malinov brothers turned, Asia has been without protection. Parts are technologically advanced enough to daunt fledgling vampires, but here, it's like time forgot these people, and vampires can have a field day without being noticed. I haven't expanded my coverage beyond the this northeastern corner, but I hope to take responsibility for the continent soon."

"You think you can patrol the same area as five ancients?" she asked sarcastically.

"With the internet, anything is possible." He tweaked her nose good-naturedly.

She rolled her eyes. "You should still get someone to help you out."

"Who?"

"Maybe your brother."

"How do you know Benjamin?" Josef demanded.

"Duh, I lived with Byron and Antonietta for 18 months. Eventually, every one of your relatives dropped by, looking for an update," she explain as if to a child.

Josef covered his face with one hand and shook his head despairingly. "I'm surprised I didn't receive an official summons from the prince," he groaned.

"Oh, we tried that," Kisha assured him. "But Mikhail sided with Byron. This was your decision, and you should be allowed to make it. I'll tell you though, if I never see another Daratrazanoff again, it'll be too soon. Are they all that scary?"

"Only Gregori. He practices his scowl in the mirror. Lucien is as cold as death's shadow, and Darius is like a lava-flow—they're not so much scary as absolute forces of nature that lesser beings should never, ever mess with. Gabriel is an old fuddy-duddy, though. Too many women in his life, or so the gossips say."

She punched his arm, and he barely felt it, but it made him smile anyway. He turned the conversation in another direction.

"So, my wife," he couldn't help but grin at the words. She blushed at the title, but didn't protest in the slightest way. "What name do I call you now?"

"Beloved apple of your eye?" she suggested innocently.

"I mean when you're in trouble," he teased.

"Well, the plan was when Gram Yagmur died, I would assume her title. It means _rain_ as well. Gram delivered me in the middle of a storm, you know. My mother died in childbirth. Gram took me in, raised me, and the camp eventually elected me as her successor. All my names have revolved around that eventual title," she explained. "Raviv, Amaya, Kisha—and my other names, Tulya, Ara, and Noelani, all mean the same thing. I was never very attached to any of them."

"What if I just called you Rayne?" he asked, brushing a lock of her dark hair behind one ear.

"It's not very original," she mock-scolded.

"But it suits you," he insisted as he brought her hand to his lips and brushed it with a tender kiss. "You can be soft and gentle, or icy and sharp. You can drift through a countryside and without leaving a single foot print. You brought new life to me, even though every time I look at you, I feel like my legs are being sucked into a muddy rice paddy. You are _just_ like the rain."

"In that case, I think I might like it," she replied with a lazy, utterly satisfied smile. "But only when I'm in trouble."

* * *

The next night, Josef woke with empty arms. A bolt of panic went threw him as he flung his senses out through the warehouse in search of Rayne. He found her in the room where he stored the freeze-dried camping rations. She was rehydrating some mashed sweet potatoes for her breakfast. He shifted form into mist and streamed up several levels until he rematerialized in the doorway.

"Rayne," he growled, enjoying using her _real_ name for the first time.

"Am I in trouble?" she asked, her eyes wide with impish innocence.

"I woke and you were gone," he replied.

"Are you worried I'm going to leave you now that I found you?" she teased.

"You are a gypsy, after all," he said as he reached for her. He had to touch her, just to reassure himself she was real.

"Not anymore," she corrected as she leaned into his embrace. "I'm with you, for better or for worse."

"Forever and ever," he whispered into her hair.

"I think the line is til-death-do-us-part," she said with a sidelong look.

"Are you planning on dying any time soon?" he asked.

She just shrugged and pulled out of his arms. She made a show of stirring honey into her reconstituted sweet potatoes. Josef tried to probe her mind for the millionth time since she had shown up on his doorstep and still found it shrouded by strong defenses. He had learned a lot about penetrating sealed files in his time online, but Rayne still eluded him completely.

"Is this about the conversion thing?" he wanted to know.

"No, it's just a _I'm-going-to-die-before-you_ thing," she replied coolly.

"Do you want to drink my blood until your own organs twist themselves into new shapes and every cell in your body rewrites its own genetic code?" he demanded bluntly. "Because we could do it tonight if you're in the mood for maddening pain."

"Now you're being spiteful," she warned.

"No. I'm concerned about you. I've seen through memories of others what it's like to watch a conversion. Some of the women even shared a fragmented sense of the all-consuming pain, so I'd understand, just in case my mate wasn't Carpathian. I would never wish you to go through something that terrible," he explained.

"So you'd rather I get old and die in less than a century?" she shot back.

"We may not even have that much time," he cried. "I stayed up late into the morning, wondering about us—"

"—classic morning-after syndrome—" she snapped.

"—and it occurred to me," he continued, ignoring her snide remark, "that the reason we were brought together now, in this time, is because this is all the time we'll have together."

Rayne paused and looked at Josef suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

Josef felt like swearing as he explained his theory. "All the ancient Carpathians I've known have found their lifemates in strange twists of fate. The coincidences of their meetings were bizarre at best. And the ancients were all nearing—or had reached—the inevitable choice of turning vampire or greeting the dawn. They were old, ready to end their lives." He paused, already regretting his next words, but he forced himself to say them anyway. "What if I am also nearing the end?"

"Are you—could you turn—" she stammered, shocked by his confession.

"I can't turn now, with you in my life," he hastily reassured her. "I know without a doubt you are my true lifemate. But what if the span of my life will never equal that of the ancients? What if after a few short, happy years together, some vampire finds a way to obliterate the entire species? Xavier almost succeeded, and two weeks ago I prevented the nuclear incineration of Eastern Europe."

Rayne looked away, considering the possibilities, the implications. Finally she asked, hesitantly, "Do you know if anyone else our age has ever been mated?"

"Most of the human lifemates were under 40 years when they were claimed. Savannah and Skyler were both claimed at the age of 18. Well, Savannah was given a few extra years on her own, but Gregori had stalked her in wolf form her entire life. The only other Carpathian male I know that was in close contact with his lifemate this early in his life didn't realize it for nearly a thousand years. He lived with her for centuries before he understood what she was doing to him. It was difficult for them later to reconcile their feelings and the consequences."

"So, you're worried that now we're mated, you're life is on the fast track to the grave?" she demanded, her voice quavering between cynicism and panic. She had forgotten all about her watery potatoes. Her eyes were fixed on Josef's face, begging for the right answer. She stepped closer to him, wanting to feel his body warming her suddenly clammy skin.

"I am not a seer," he said softly as he laid his hands on her hips, perfectly formed as if they were designed to hold his palms. "I'm just an artist who wanted to hunt and ended up as the world's greatest hacker. I can't say if we will have 5 months or 5 centuries together. But I don't want to rush you into something horribly painful because someone else set that example."

"But what about me? Isn't it easier for me to…to get hurt as a human?" she pointed out.

"Yes, but I am a man of the 21st century, not of the dark ages," he answered with a crooked, rakish smile. "I know you can take care of yourself and I trust you to do that. Every evening I wake up without you folded safe in my arms, I will have a heart attack. And then I will search for you. And I will find you. And I will come to you. I can promise you that for the rest of our lives."

Rayne's arms slipped around Josef's tapered waist. "You say the sweetest things," she sighed, completely in love.

The doorbell rang. Out of habit, Josef reached out with his mind to investigate the visitor. It was not Jie or Lieu or Momo Hue or any of the villagers. It was a small group of armed Korean soldiers.


	4. Chapter 4

_So it's been a few days, but in all fairness, I was sleeping. ^_^ It's a short chapter, but a lot happens. I hope you enjoy it. And remember, reviews are always welcome!  
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**Dark Storm  
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**Chapter 4**

It was not unheard for Josef to be visited by various investigators, but as he scanned the minds of the four Korean soldiers outside his door, his mood darkened. Someone from the village had betrayed him.

Living in poverty with a large family was difficult enough, but when children sickened, parents borrowed money they could not afford to pay the doctor. Until Josef had arrived, the only lenders in the area were opium lords. Several times, Josef had loaned modest ammounts of money to men in debt to the opium lords, to help them get on their feet and avoid the conciquences of late or light payments. It was also one of the reasons he answered medical emergencies in the village—to keep the influence of the drug cartel to a minimum. But one man, Josef could see his face clearly now, was of such weak moral fiber that he had sold information to the Korean government about a suspicious white man.

The soldiers had received orders to confinscate anything and everything, and detain Joesf for "questioning." The offical reason was that he was under suspicion for dealing in black market goods—which was true enough. In a country where the internet was almost a myth and personal computers were unheard of, Josef's warehouse was a treasure trove of contraban. Still, something was off about this investigation.

"What is it?" Rayne demanded when she saw the scowl on Josef's face.

"Trouble," he growled. "We have guests."

"Not the good kind, obviously," she remarked.

He took a moment to weigh his advantages. He was physically stronger than the men, his senses were quicker, his mission more absolute. He might be able to completely control one or two of them, but all four at once would be difficul, if not impossible. It would be easier if he could take their blood; he had not yet fed today and it would give him an edge over them. Still, welcoming four armed strangers into his home was not something he did as a rule.

"Who are they?" Rayne wanted to know, watching the violent emotions flicker across Josef's face.

"Messangers of a traitor," he replied through clenched teeth. Josef wanted to snarl in frustration like a wild animal. For any of the rest of his people, four normal humans would pose no threat, but Josef was still a fledgeling. Sure, he could skip around the internet like a virtual god, but in a world where not everything was written in 1's and 0's, he could not solve problems with a wave of his hand. He pushed Rayne towards the stairs that decended to his bacement sancturary. "Hide," he ordered. "No matter what, don't let them see you."

"Didn't you just finish telling me that you trusted me?" she retorted.

"I trust you," he agreed grimly. "The scruples of the Korean military, not so much." Something hard and cruel glinted in his eyes, and it convined Rayne to retreat momentarily.

"Just be careful," she whispered as she disapeared downstairs.

Josef nodded and turned back to the intruders.

The doorbell rang again, and this time it was accopanied by the battering of a gun butt against the door. Josef took a deep, calming breath and openend it.

" Annyeong hashimnikka," he greeted them formally.

"We have orders to search the building," snapped the sergeant in Korean.

"Impossible," Josef replied, his face a mask of serenity.

"Stand aside," the sergeant ordered.

"No," Josef said, softly and calmly.

Four guns leveled at his chest. Then they were pointing at nothing. Josef moved so swiftly his motions were a blur. He ducked under the guns and straightened between the four men. One fist flickered and the sergeant sprawled on the ground. Josef turned, catching the ankle of another soldier with his foot. The soldier went down, cracking his head on the hard path. The third soldier had less of a chance as Josef sucker punched him. The fourth only blinked before Josef's fingers were around his throat, squeezing the life out of him. The solder blacked out and Josef released him, letting his limp body crumple like litter on the ground.

Unconscious, the soldiers were much easier to deal with. Josef roughly lifted the sergeant and sank his fangs into the man's neck. Josef could taste the opium still in man's blood from the night before. It was sickening the way these men professed to serve their Great Leader only to prey on the weak and poison themselves. Josef only took enough blood to ensure he could control the sergeant before moving onto the next soldier. He took blood from all of them, sating his hunger and obtaining the key to manipulating their minds. When he was finished, he picked up their guns, bent them over his knee, and threw them far into the forest. Then he dragged them down the path and away from his warehouse.

In the middle of the road a quarter mile away, Josef dumped them in the road. He took another deep breath, centering himself, before he entered the soldiers' minds. In each one, he removed their memories of the fight outside his door, and instead replaced them with a thorough search of his warehouse. They confiscated a cell phone, but discovered nothing else illegal. He implanted positive, endearing memories of him as a generous host, giving them each several drinks of saké before they left. They didn't want to detain him for questioning. They wanted to come back later and have more saké. They had left on good terms. Then he added memories of an ambush. Nameless rogues had attacked them and grabbed their guns and the confiscated cell phone before knocking them out.

Josef removed himself from their minds, a little fatigued by the elaborate ruse, but satisfied with his work.

"Hasagwan," Josef called gently, his voice the sound of meek concern, as he shook the sergeant's shoulder. "Hasagwan, are you alright?"

"Huh?" the sergeant muttered as he regained his senses.

"I heard shouts," Josef explained. "What happened?"

The sergeant looked around at his men lying in the dirt, the implanted memories rising to the surface to explain these unusual and embarrassing circumstances.

"Nothing to see here," he snapped, pushing Josef away. The sergeant scrambled to his feet and then started to prod his officers with his toe. "Up! Get up, you idiots!"

Josef discreetly backed off as the sergeant's fists began to fly, punishing the men for being bested by a band of country bumpkins. Josef almost felt a twinge of guilt for the unfortunate recipients of the sergeant's brutal discipline, but he reminded himself that these men would have had no qualms about shooting him or Rayne. Or worse.

Back at the warehouse, he found Rayne at the foot of the first flight of stairs. She'd retreated, but only as far as was out of sight. If Josef had needed help, she would have been by his side in an instant, wielding the crowbar she'd found behind a discarded computer shell.

"Is everything alright?" she wanted to know.

"For now," Josef sighed. "But I think I need to have a talk with the man who tried to sell me down the river."

"I have a few choice words I'd like to share with him," she grumbled, her grip tightening on the crowbar ominously.

Her righteous anger on his behalf melted his heart like nothing else could have. "He will answer to both of us," he assured her. He had already sent the anxious thoughts along the blood bond he shared with the man. Soon, driven nearly to insanity, the traitor would find himself on Josef's doorstep without explanation.

Josef leaned forward to kiss the frown off of Rayne's face. "You are truly a precious treasure," he told her.

"You're just saying that because I have a crowbar in my hands," she accused teasingly. She set the metal implement down and reached up to lace her fingers behind Josef's neck.

"I'd say that no matter what you had in your hands," he replied and kissed her again. Rayne's stomach growled loudly in protest. "You need to eat."

"Well, if those goons hadn't come looking for trouble and interrupted my dinner, my stomach wouldn't be interrupting us now," she reasoned.

"I'll have Momo Hue make you some _mi-yuk gook,_" he said.

"What is gook?" she asked skeptically, arching an eyebrow at the unappetizing name.

"Seaweed soup."

"Ohh! That sounds delicious," she exclaimed.

Josef smiled. "Why don't I take you to Momo Hue now?"

"Isn't it a little late?" she reminded him.

"She won't mind," he assured her. "Ever since her great-grandson was born, she always has a pot of mi-yuk gook over the fire pit."

Then Rayne's face lit up with understanding. "You just want me out of the way when the traitor comes."

Josef laughed. "You found me out," he confessed. "But still, seaweed soup?"

"Tomorrow night," she replied firmly.

Josef sighed, but relented. The traitor was almost there anyway.

His name was Ko Lee. He was fat for a rice farmer, and had an unfortunate affinity for everything American. He lusted after the wealth and lifestyle of the western world, and even though he had accepted Josef's help when the opium lords were about to take away his family, Ko still envied Josef with a greed as dark as the night sky. Josef had hoped that by rescuing him, the man would mature a little and start caring for his family better. Alas, Josef had been sorely mistaken.

Ko was trembling when he came up to the door of the mysterious Hwan Yeong. Before he could succumb to the pressure to knock or the willpower to run, the door opened. A figure shrouded in darkness invited him in very formally, but Ko could see the eyes blazing red, glowing in the night. His throat felt like a rock was stuck in it. He couldn't even utter a civil greeting. Ko's legs moved without him telling them to, carrying him into the dread warehouse. He walked over to an empty folding chair and sat.

Suddenly, a heavy hand gripped his shoulder. Ko was too afraid to even shiver under that hand. The hand squeezed his shoulder ominously and a little painfully.

"I had some interesting visitors, tonight," Josef said softly in Korean. "Can you explain to me, why, after all I have done for you and your family, you would betray me to the military?"

"I-I-I s-serve our G-Great Leader," Ko stammered stupidly. Truthfully, he didn't have a reason other than greed. The military paid for tips on black market stockpiles, and even though he didn't need the money—thanks to the very man who was interrogating him—he had wanted it.

Josef read Ko's thoughts with disgust. He caught glimpses of Ko's wife and eldest sons begging him not to betray Mr. Yeong. They were afraid that Mr. Yeong would retract his protection from the opium lords. Apparently Ko had not been as afraid as he was greedy. Josef did not want to make an example of Ko, but he was afraid that if he did not, his kindness would be repaid with more treasury.

"You hunger after the western world," Josef observed. Ko didn't deny it. "You don't know what you have here. The simplicity. The innocence. The peace. Since you cannot appreciate these qualities, I shall remove them from you. I will send you to the western world."

Ko looked up, startled. Suspicious.

"That's right, Ko." Josef bent to look the man in the eyes. "I have a friend in Los Angeles. In Korea Town. This friend needs a worker. And I think you will fit in perfectly."

"But—my family—" Ko started to protest.

"They are no longer your concern," Josef snapped. "Not that you had much concern for them before."

"You—you will never get me a-across the border," he challenged.

Josef smiled, showing his fangs. Ko cowered. "Getting you across the border is the easy part."

"Lover," called a sinfully seductive female voice. Ko jumped, even as Josef's hand held him down in the chair. Rayne came out from behind a stack of boxes. Ko's heart nearly stopped. The woman he was looking at was beautiful beyond words, but somehow just as sinister as Mr. Yeong. "Are you done, yet?"

Josef held out an arm and she leaned into his embrace with the grace of a rare feline. Together, they made a steamy, sexy couple. But for all their beauty, Ko couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom rolling of both of them.

"Almost, pet."

Ko couldn't take his eyes off of Rayne. She turned her gaze to him, her eyes flashing green—just like a cat's—and just smiled. Ko screamed.

" Agma!" he cried and hid his face. _Demon._ Her smile was filled with sharp, jagged shark teeth. With her glowing eyes, she looked like a monster that had stepped out of the sea and into the skin of a beautiful woman. Ko was certain she would eat him alive and pick her teeth with his bones.

"I just need to take him to Japan, love," Josef replied as if Ko hadn't cried out. "After I extract a toll first."

Josef released Rayne and then took a firmer mental grip on Ko. He simply paralyzed the man so he couldn't fight back. Then, while Ko was fully aware of the event, Josef sank his teeth into him and drank deeply. When Josef broke off feeding, Ko was dizzy with blood loss but not in any mortal danger.

"I'll be back before dawn, precious," Josef promised as he threw Ko over his shoulders. Then he went out to the garden and launched into the air. As they flew over the dark Sea of Japan, Josef tampered with Ko's memories, turning Rayne's smile and the feeding into a reoccurring nightmare. Ko would be cursed until his dying day to worry about his family but be too afraid to return to Korea for them. His shame would haunt him every night.

Josef planned to keep tabs on him, in case he ever matured beyond his materialistic tendancies, but he wasn't expect anything. He deposited Ko at a shipping dock in Japan, and with a few mental nudges, registered Ko as a deck hand on a small cargo ship. Using a digital kiosk, he sent an e-mail to his contact in Korea Town, Los Angeles, to expect Lee Ko in two month's time. Then, finally, he returned to the little Korean village he had learned to call home. The trip had taken most of the night.

He found Rayne in the garden, waiting for him. He gathered her up into an embrace and she clutched at him, thankful he was safe and whole. They stood for a moment, each enjoying the feel of the other.

"That was quite a display of teeth," Josef murmured into her hair as he nuzzled her neck.

"A trick I learned in Greece," she replied. "I didn't like the way he smelled."

"You caught it too?" he asked, surprised.

"Blood," Rayne confirmed. "And saliva on his right hand. He socked someone good, and I'll bet Euros to Yen it wasn't in self defense."

"I should visit his family," Josef sighed. "Make sure everyone is alright."

"I'm right behind you," she volunteered.

"You shouldn't be seen," he cautioned. "It's difficult enough keeping suspicion down with one white westerner in town but—"

" I can be as silent as the fog, as invisible as the wind. No one will know I'm there," she assured him. " Besides, you just flew to Japan and back. I missed you." She traced a random, swirling, strangely sexy pattern on his chest.

"I remember, and I missed you too," he said with a smile. Wrapping his arms tighter around her waist, he launched them both into the night sky.

They flew through the night air directly towards the Lee house. It was little more than a shack on stilts. A small fire glowed within, altering them that someone was already up. Josef and Rayne landed outside. Rayne melted into the shadows and Josef, satisfied with her camouflage, knocked on the door post.

Lin Lee, Ko's wife, came to the door. Even in the dark, Josef could see that the left side of her face was swollen and bruised. The instant she saw the illusive Mr. Yeong, she fell to her knees and bowed her forehead to the floor.

" Jwesongheyo, jwesongheyo," she apologized over and over. Josef raised a hand and she stopped.

"Peace," he whispered in Korean. "You will not be troubled this night."

"My—Ko," she said tentatively. "Where is my husband?"

"Gone," Josef replied, his voice deep and dark. She whimpered, but he could tell it was more from fear of him than for concern for her husband. Josef continued, modeling his voice after his uncle's when ever Byron made a decision for the family. "You and your family are now under my protection. So long as your sons do not follow their father's example, I will provide for them in the place of their father."

It was an old custom, when one man took the life of another to assume responsibility for the family. Usually it came with all the wealth the family possessed and coupling privileges with the dead man's wife and/or daughters. Even though Ko wasn't actually dead, it was the simplest explanation for his absence .

Lin nodded and bowed again. Josef knew these thoughts were going through the woman's mind as she assessed her new position in life as a single mother. It was in her mind to accept Josef as a father figure for her children and as a man in her bed, should he so desire.

Josef bent to whisper in her ear, wanting to keep his next words from any sharp child's ear that might be listening in the next room. "If you need anything, you are to come to me first. You owe me no physical service, no tribute of any kind. It is my duty to provide for you, my privilege to call you friend. I am only sorry I did not understand the depravity of Ko's nature until now. Be at peace, you and your family are safe."

Lin looked up to protest, but Mr. Yeong was already gone, disappeared into the pre-dawn light.


	5. Chapter 5

_This part was exciting to write, and just to warn you at the beginning: IT ENDS IN A HORRIBLE CLIFFHANGER! So you can't say I didn't warn you. Read at your own risk.  
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**Dark Storm  
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**Chapter 5**

Josef woke with Rayne wrapped in his arms. He sighed. It was getting harder and harder to resist her gently throbbing pulse, especially when they were in the throes of passion. He knew her blood would taste more delicious than her skin or her lips or her breasts or the secret places between her legs. Her blood was the only part of her he hadn't sampled yet, but he didn't want to push it. Part of his reason for abstaining was that he knew his uncle and the ancients would smell the exchange a mile away. He was a little bit afraid that they wouldn't acknowledge his legitimate bond with Rayne and accuse him of breaking one of the Carpathian's sacred laws: never to use a human for sustenance _and_ sexual pleasure.

Rayne was intuitive enough to know, because she tempted him constantly, pulling her hair to the side and exposing her long, elegant neck to his ravaging kisses. She didn't say anything, but she let him know that she was willing to give and receive that final gift as soon as he was ready to do likewise. It would be soon, he knew, but not too soon. They had time. He had to remember that.

Josef squeeze Rayne gently, reveling in the feel of her body next to his. Rayne stirred in his embrace, her eyes sexy and slumberous. Then, she shivered as if she was suddenly cold.

"Something is wrong," she whispered. "Something with the Caravan."

"What do you want to do about it?" he asked her, prepared to go to the ends of the earth with a single word from her.

She shook her head. "Nothing. I'm not part of the Caravan anymore. My life is here, with you."

He kissed her, because he had to. He may be only 32 years old, but he knew deep in his soul that this was the woman he wanted to spend centuries with. There was no other woman for him. It was as simple as that.

Byron woke, once again, to the sound of someone trying to break into his resting chamber. This time it was an elderly voice arguing with Tasha. Byron sighed, kissed Antonietta's sleeping eyes, and went out to discover the source of the trouble.

"Let me troo zis instant," the elderly voice scolded, the eastern European accent as thick as butter.

"No one is allowed in there!" Tasha protested hotly.

"Get out ov my vay or I'll curse you eight vays from Toozday," warned the elderly voice.

"Just try it, you crazy old bat," Tasha dared.

"You—"

"Please do not curse Tasha," Byron requested gently. "She is difficult enough to deal with as it is."

Gram Yagmur stood before him, stately in her dark brown skirt, natural linen shirt, and heavy red wool shawl. Like any gypsy, she wore her wealth in her ears and on her arms and around her neck, but she held herself with such an important air that it took a moment for Byron to realize that the old woman barely stood 5 feet tall.

"I need to speak vis you," she said, pointing a bony finger at Byron's chest.

"I am at your disposal," he replied with a suave bow. Tasha just huffed in exasperation as she left the room.

"Your nephew iz endangering my grand-daughter und heir," Gram Yagmur said seriously.

Byron blinked in disbelief. True, he hadn't received a flicker of information directly from Josef, and also true, he had allowed Raviv to leave two weeks ago after she'd spent a year and a half at the Palazzo . But Byron doubted that Raviv was in any real danger from Josef.

"How do you mean?" he asked, guardedly.

"You know exzactly how I mean," snapped the old woman. "You are zee only vone who can save her."

"You will have to be more specific. I have not seen my nephew in nearly two years, but I do not think he is a threat to anyone," he protested gently.

"Ze bonez never lie," Gram Yagmur growled. "Zey tell me zat ze beast in him iz rizing."

"He is what he is," Byron said with a shrug. "All our males carry the burden of darkness."

She glared at him. "You are not listening! My grand-daughter iz in danger!"

"Your grand-daughter is not my concern," he replied coolly.

"If your nephew drains my grand-daughter's blood, you vill loze him as vell," she threatened.

Byron's eyes flashed. "He knows our laws, and he is young. He would not choose to lose his soul so soon."

"Ze bones say ozervise," Gram Yagmur almost cackled.

"What bones are these that you put so much faith in?" he demanded skeptically.

She looked at him with the condescending eye of a cat. "Zat does not concern you. Vot should concern you iz zat your nephew iz on ze other side of ze vorld und you hold no power over him."

Byron probed her mind and came up against powerful defenses. Curiously, they were not the defenses of in-born power, but of tremendous mental control. Her memories and knowledge were in a state of lock-down, inaccessible without her express desire. Byron could have cracked these defenses, but it would have taken a great deal of time. Time which he didn't seem to have.

"I trust my nephew," he replied, smoothly. But already he was reaching out to his best friend Jacques for aid. _A human of some psychic power thinks Josef is in danger of turning vampire and killing her granddaughter_.

After a brief moment, Jacques replied, _She should be more afraid of him rapping her to death. _Byron sent back the impression of rolling his eyes. _But_, Jacques continued, _It might be interesting to visit him._

_I know you have a young son__—_

_He can stay with my brother for a while. That boy is very much like his father and I think Shea needs a vacation, _Jacques replied, laughing slightly. _We will prepare for your arrival so that we can go to North Korea together._

"Your trust von't keep him from committing horrible crimes," Gram Yagmur snarled.

"Do not concern yourself with my family," Byron retorted icily. "Go back to your caravan, old woman."

Furious, she turned on her heel and marched out the door.

Rayne found Josef in the garden, practicing his martial arts. She leaned against the frame of the back door and watched as he moved gracefully under the moonlight. His muscles were lean, subtle ripples of pure power under fair skin. His blue-black hair was longish, chopped an inch shy of his jaw. His goatee was trimmed in an attractive but simple style. His familiar _paji _pants didn't even whisper in the night as he kicked, whirled, and leapt about the garden.

"That's so impressive. What style is that?" she wanted to know. It was amazing to think they had been together a whole week already. Married life with Josef was wonderful.

"This is Aikido," he said as he danced, his arms pushing and pulling the air. "I also know most forms of jutsu, Kung Fu, and Eskrima."

"Hey, I know Eskrima!" Rayne exclaimed happily.

"Given the nature of a gypsy, it makes sense," Josef said with a smile. "A simple system, cohesive and effective."

"Gram thought so," she returned his smile. "But since I know Eskrima, can you teach me something else?"

Josef stopped moving and considered. "How about Tai Chi?"

"That's for old people!" she cried.

"Quite the contrary. It's a meditation discipline, and you could use a little calm in your life," he teased.

"How about Kung Fu?" she suggested with a meaningful arch in her brow.

"Fine," Josef said, as if he was conceding a great defeat. "Shaolin Kung Fu alright with you?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," she exclaimed and all but bounced up next to him. "Let's start!"

"I'll teach you Tóngzigōng first," Josef explained, assuming the first stance. "It focuses on flexibility."

"What, am I not flexible enough? You weren't complaining last night," she taunted as she mimicked his stance.

Josef blushed. "Let just get this over with."

They practiced together for an hour, minds halfway merged as Rayne shadowed Josef's movements until they had the first set down in perfect unison.

"That's amazing! How did you learn this? Have you been to the Shaolin temple?" she asked as she picked up a thread-bare towel to mop the sweat from her face.

"No," he said with some regret in his voice. "I researched it online. I know every published move and all the theory behind it, but I've never consulted a master."

"Not even over email?" she was incredulous.

"Nope," he replied.

"Why don't we go visit?" she suggested. "It'd be like a road trip—and then we could learn from actual Kung Fu masters!

He laughed at her enthusiasm. "You're a gypsy through and through," he chuckled.

Her eyelashes swept down demurely, making her appear sexy and mysterious in the silvery glow of the moon. "I was just thinking it would be an interesting honeymoon," she replied softly.

A lump lodged in Josef's throat, and for a minute he couldn't reply. This was the second thing he couldn't give her. "I can't," he finally admitted huskily.

"Why not?" Rayne asked, suddenly concerned by the conflict evident in his eyes.

"The people here," he gestured towards the village. "They need me."

"Why?" she asked, genuinely confused. "They were fine before you came, they'd be fine if you took a vacation…wouldn't they?"

"No," he said. "Before I came, women—girls barely teenagers—were kidnapped and sold to Chinese slavery rings. Opium lords were feared more than the government soldiers, and even those monsters were a reason to hide under the house. Death by starvation was commonplace. Fifty percent of babies died in the first _month_ of life, and if they managed live long enough to walk, they were put work in the rice fields. Life here was nearly impossible before I came."

"Then—you told Ko that—" she struggled to understand.

"Life here is innocent and simple. Most people aren't even aware that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. But if their basic needs are met, they don't need to. After I arrived, life was just a little sweeter. Not so sweet that anyone would suspect something—I'm not that powerful, actually," he admitted. "But I managed to drive back a little of the fear in people's hearts. They're terrified of me, now, but not in the same way. It's hard to explain but—"

"Happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you've got," Rayne murmured softly as she embraced him. "You've got this village, and now that you're genuinely needed, you want to stay here. There's nothing wrong with that. The communist regime can't last forever. And when it finally falls and these people can rely on someone else, then we'll visit the Shaolin temple."

Josef hugged her back, tears in his eyes at her compassion. She understood him unlike anyone else in his life. Even his own parents had misunderstood everything from his rapping to his art to the videogames he helped create. This one gentle, light-filled, foot-loose and teasing creature understood him.

He reached down and groped her butt. She was smoking hot too!

"BO!" she punched his shoulder. Then she reached over and grabbed his butt too. He laughed and kissed her and squeezed her close.

The doorbell rang. Josef groaned with the pent up energy in his groin that would not find relief now. He reached out to see who was there. It was Lieu.

Her mind was a whirl of confusion and fear. Josef probed deeper and discovered that a villager had been hurt—crushed under an ox cart with a broken axel. There was blood everywhere and the young man's family was in a panic. Lieu was panicked—if the only man who would have her died…

"Come," he said briskly to Rayne. "The villagers need us." He rushed through the warehouse, scooping up his portable medical kit. He opened the door and nodded at Lieu. She was too choked up to explain but she didn't have to. She pointed and Josef ran down the path.

As soon as he was out of sight, he put on his supernatural speed and was at the scene of the accident in under a minute. It was bad. The boy's left leg was pinned under the sharp bottom edge of the cart. The artery that ran close to the femur had been pinched, and blood was leaking onto the ground at an alarming rate. Bae was his name, Josef had gleaned that from Lieu's mind. Bae was from a neighboring village and Josef had not taken blood from him. That would make his work harder. The smell of the blood spilled on the muddy ground gave Josef pause, because he had not yet fed that night, but he was compelled by the pain and dispair radiating from the young man.

"To me," he ordered the villagers. They had been trying to lift the cart full of heavy soil off the boy and been unsuccessful so far, but when the mysterious Hwan Yeong gave an order, it was followed, no matter how hopeless it seemed. They all took positions around the cart, ready to lift. "Hana! Dul! Set!"

Together the men heaved, Josef lifting the most. The cart toppled over and Bae was free. Josef knelt beside him and opened his medical kit. He pulled out an elastic band and tied it around Bae's leg above the wound. The tourniquet staunched most of the bleeding, but the damage was extensive. Josef pulled out some gauze pads and pushed them against the wound. He took a moment to free himself from his body and enter the crushed leg.

Josef didn't spend time healing everything. A more powerful Carpathian would not have been daunted by this task, but Josef was still a fledgling, a fact he was coming to hate. Still, using the pure energy of his spirit, he cauterized the femoral artery and fused the worst cracks in the bone. At least it wasn't broken. Bae would need a lot of time to heal naturally, but with the antibiotics Josef could provide, Bae had a good chance of keeping the leg.

That is if he could survive the blood loss.

_Rayne!_ he called over their psychic connection.

_That's not fair,_ she replied, swamping him with warmth and reassurance. _I can't possibly be in trouble._

_No, but this man is. What blood type are you?_ Josef demanded.

_O negative. Universal donor,_ she informed him. _We'll be there in a few minutes. Lieu is a mess._

Using the moments before Rayne arrived, Josef ripped bamboo poles out of the wagon and fashioned a splint. Then he used several yards of ace bandages to secure the makeshift splints.

Then Rayne was beside him, and the world seemed in balance again. She offered her arm at the same moment Josef dug out needles and a blood bag. The surrounding villagers gasped as Josef calmly inserted the needle into a large vein in the pit of Rayne's elbow. He filled the bag with a unit of blood before pulling the needle out. He kissed the wound, sealing it with his saliva and giving himself a tiny tantalizing taste of her sweet blood.

It felt wrong to give this meaningless boy a drop of Rayne's precious blood. Her blood belonged to Josef, just like everything else. But then Rayne was in his mind, soothing his jealous tendencies, and enabling him to insert a fresh needle in Bae's arm so that he could receive the life-giving fluid. It took only a few minutes of tense waiting for the blood to ender Bae's system. When the transfusion was finished, Josef scooped Bae into his arms and carried him to Momo Hue's hut. Lieu was right behind in, tears of worry and relief streaming down her face. Rayne closed up the medical kit and followed. Many of the villagers trailed behind them all, anxious for the young man's health and curious about Hwan Yeong.

Momo Hue welcomed Josef into her home, directing him to place Bae on a straw futon near the fire. Lieu knelt by Bae's head and took his hand. Quietly, Josef gave Momo Hue a small, nondescript box with antibiotics in it. If a snitch for the Korean Army or Opium Lords saw it, they wouldn't think anything of it, whereas if they saw an orange prescription bottle, it would raise suspicions instantly. "Give him one with every meal, and make sure his wounds are cleaned with fresh water. If he starts showing signs of infection, inform me immediately."

The old woman nodded and moved closer to the two young people. Even though his eyes were blurry with pain, Bae was looking at Lieu as if she meant the world to him. The two were lost in their own world with each other.

Josef left as quietly as a shadow, catching Rayne's waist and holding her close as he escorted her away from the curious crowds. Using his blood connection with all of the spectators, he directed their eyes away from him and distanced the traumatic memory. This would only be a short-lived piece of gossip.

A ripple passed over the edges of Josef's awareness. He felt distant villagers shiver with an acute sense of foreboding. Josef knew that presence, even though it was a few miles away. He sighed to himself. He had known this day would come eventually, but he had hoped for more time to train himself. He sent a burst of power out to every single person he had ever taken blood from. It was a command to get inside, close the doors, and not open them until morning.

He rushed back to his warehouse with Rayne in his arms, and vaulted over the garden wall. When he landed, he instantly sent his mind out, searching for the security protocols he'd set in place years ago. Defenses buzzed, booby-traps were set, generators fired up, imitation sun lamps bathed his most precious hard drives in light to insulate them from prying Carpathians and Vampires alike.

"Go inside," Josef ordered Rayne.

"Why? What's up?" she demanded.

"My people have come for me, and you must be safe," he replied, lovingly tracing the line of her jaw. "They cannot take you away from me."

Rayne nodded. Josef gave her directions to avoid the triggers and trips and get to the safest, brightest room in the building. She kissed him and left as he had asked. Josef took a deep, calming breath and waited.

Byron appeared in front of Josef, looking dark and dangerous as he surveyed the garden. "I never knew you had a green thumb," he complimented his nephew casually.

"We are of the earth, after all," Josef replied stoically, keeping his mental barriers strong.

"True," Byron murmured. The older Carpathian brushed against his nephew's mind using their blood bond. Josef's defenses were strange and blocky. Mentally he prodded at them and felt a sharp sting in retaliation. Josef's face betrayed no surprise at the small invasion. Unable to understand the barriers, Byron asked directly, "Have you lost your colors and emotions yet?"

Josef held back a sigh. At least someone was upfront with their concerns instead of guessing. "No, uncle. I have not. I can see quite clearly that your shirt is a hideous combination of green and orange. Is that really what they are wearing in Italy these days? I must admit relief that I escaped just in time."

Byron laughed and his shirt faded from the bright colors he'd used to test his nephew to the soft burgundy Antonietta loved. "It is good to see you also retain a sense of humor."

"That is the only thing that makes this god-forsaken country livable," Josef replied.

"And what about Raviv?" Byron demanded, all mirth gone from his face. "I can smell her on you and in this garden, so do not deny she is here. You know our laws—"

"And I have not broken them," Josef assured his uncle.

"You have not taken her blood?" Byron emphasized.

"No…not yet," Josef replied. He knew he was treading on thin ice with that reply, but he owed it to his uncle to be honest.

"Then you intend to break our laws?" Byron growled.

"There is no law that prohibits an exchange with one's lifemate," Josef replied smoothly.

"Do you believe that one as young as you could have possibly found a lifemate when other ancient hunters have searched for centuries without success?" Byron drawled condescendingly.

"I know the odds uncle, and I have calculated them a hundred times over. Despite how remote they are, I have found my lifemate," Josef responded, keeping his face clear of any emotion. He knew his uncle still viewed him as little more than a child, and throwing a tantrum would not help his cause. Where the ancients could have leeway for their unfamiliarity with emotions, Josef had never truly lost them. He need to have more self-discipline than the ancients. He needed show more control than Byron, be blameless if this issue was ever taken before the Prince and the Elders.

"You are living in a fantasy," Byron accused. "All you share with Raviv is infatuation. Nothing more."

"I love her, uncle," Josef said, his voice as soft as velvet. "And she loves me. We have shared the binding words, the blending of minds and bodies. There is no mistake, no farce, no fantasy."

"But you have not shared blood," Byron reaffirmed.

"Not yet," Josef repeated.

"Not ever," Byron growled. "I forbid it."

"Forbid away, uncle," he replied. "It will not change our the intensity of our bond, nor the inevitable path along which it will lead us."

"Then for her safety and your wellbeing, I must separate the two you," Byron decided.

"You may try, if you feel that is right," Josef conceded. "But be forewarned that I will not easily allow such a thing."

Byron brushed Josef's mind again with the intent of compelling him to stand down, but found it clouded—impossible to understand. It was filled with snowy static, a blur of gibberish. He pushed deeper, but came up against shocking—even painful defenses. Josef's mind lashed out at intruders despite the blood bond they shared.

"I use safeguards you did not teach me, uncle. Nor can you crack them so swiftly," Josef responded to the perplexed look on Byron's face. "A battle of wits is pointless, as you are unarmed." To prove his point, Josef lashed out at Byron, some strange spell snapping and sparking at the edges of his awareness, numbing his mental sensors for a moment.

"How have you become so powerful?" Byron asked conversationally as he retreated from the mental battle field.

Josef wanted to laugh at his uncle. It was not that he had gained power, but simply exercised discipline and economy when he used it. His mental barriers were like anti-virus programs, and to an old man used to complex symbols with complex meanings, understanding a world where intricacy equated with power, the simplistic binary coding was as foreign to him as a brain-sucking zombie from Mars. Instead of explaining this to his ex-guardian, Josef just smiled. He took on a basic fighting stance and waited.

Byron's first attack was just a gust of wind, but it just split around and away from Josef. Josef didn't even twitch a hand to direct it. Byron swept his hand towards his nephew again, trying to twist the evening fog around him like a rope, but the vapor had barely made one full circle before it dissolved into nothing. Still, Josef was immovable as a rock, not the smallest movement betraying his intentions and his eyes locked firmly on his Uncle.

"Where is she?" Byron asked, trying to break through Josef's defenses by distracting him. "Is she in that shack you call a home? I thought your mother and I raised you with better standards." He flicked his hand and shards of ice shot towards Josef. The ice melted and evaporated within inches of Josef's skin.

"Wealth has become the soft spot of the Carpathians in the west," Josef observed. "When you are all powerful, rich beyond reason, and convinced of your own superiority, you do not think to study that which is not under your control, as you perceive that nothing is."

"An interesting philosophy," Byron remarked. He readied himself for a physical attack. It was not without trepidation that he considered striking his nephew, but Byron needed to get Raviv away from Josef before something tragic happened. If Josef were to turn so young, Byron's sister might never recover from the heartbreak.

Josef saw his uncle's muscles bunch, his posture tense ever so slightly. It wasn't much, but it was enough for Josef. Byron struck with blurring speed, but his arm went through vacant air. Josef stood two feet away, still between Byron and the warehouse, still in the same position, still unmoving.

"Why did you come here?" Byron wondered as he swung at Josef's head. Josef ducked gracefully and then jumped as Byron tried to sweep his legs out from under him. "Was it just the remote location that attracted you?"

"Yes," Josef said simply, dodging another blow with practiced ease.

"Raviv waited for you at the Palazzo," Byron told him.

"I know," Josef replied. Every time he avoided a strike, he returned to the same position.

"If you wanted her so badly, why did you never return?" Byron demanded. He made another punch for Josef's diaphragm.

Water rose up from the ground like a wall and froze the instant Byron's hand made contact. Byron blinked at his fist encased in an inch of ice. He had not seen Josef move a muscle. The water was just there. He ripped his hand free and took a step back.

"It was never about my wanting her," Josef replied softly. "I wanted her from the first moment I saw her. But if she did not want me, I had no right to force my presence on her. Had she died before we reunited, I would have faced the dawn with honor and a clear conscience."

"Then you know you cannot possibly be destined for each other, for true lifemates cannot be parted from each other for so long," Byron reasoned. When had his nephew learned such skills? Byron didn't know how well Josef would fair in an all out fight because he couldn't lay a hand on the boy. Nor did Josef give away the slightest inclination of his intentions.

"Perhaps that is true for an old fuddy-duddy like you," Josef conceded with a trace of a smirk. "I have heard that age increases the sensations of everything. Pain. Pleasure. Hunger. Need. We are still young, still very much like humans who can bear the distance for a time."

"You have done a remarkable job of convincing yourself of that," Byron snapped. Old fuddy-duddy indeed!

Josef's smirk became genuine. "Now if only you believed it as well."

Byron redoubled his attack, trying to knock his nephew to his knees, but every time the older Carpathian got close to landing a hit, Josef would duck, dodge, or just dissolve. Out of frustration, Byron sprang into the air to deliver a powerful roundhouse kick to Joseph's middle, but his foot just went right through Josef's body as if the boy was nothing more than mist.

"Just go back to Italy, uncle, before you have a heart attack," Josef said reasonably.

"I will not allow you to disgrace yourself here," Byron vowed.

"Aunt Toni won't be pleased if you get home with bruises and broken bones," Josef warned.

"Do not concern yourself about my well being when you tread the edge of a razor with your own," Byron advised.

Josef shrugged, and then attacked for the first time. While still not moving a muscle, the ground under Byron's feet cracked and gaped open. Byron launched himself into the air and landed 10 feet back, away from the rupturing earth. Sleet came out of nowhere, stinging Byron's exposed skin before he could shield himself. Byron tried turning the sleet back on Josef, but like before, the attack just parted in front of him. Twin sleet cyclones whipped up on either side of Josef, then threw themselves at Byron. Byron barely fended them off before a geyser of mud shot at him from the hole in the ground.

Suddenly Josef fell to his knees. "RAYNE!" he screamed into the night.

_About time, _Byron said grudgingly to Jacques.

_She was in a room bathed in artificial sunlight. It was difficult to shut off the lights from a distance and avoid all the traps Josef had set up,_ Jacques replied ruefully. _Your nephew is quite resourceful._

"We are taking her back to her caravan," Byron said, trying not to pant. Josef battled unlike anyone else he had ever spared against. "You may stay here or you may come back to the Palazzo."

"I will follow her," Josef growled. "You could take her to the ends of the earth, but I would still follow her."

"I will protect her. And you," Byron vowed. "I wish it had not come to this, Josef. Your mother will be disappointed."

"I don't _care,_" he snarled. "Rayne is my heart and soul."

"You will come to your senses eventually," Byron replied softly, almost regretfully. "When you do, home will always be open to you."

_Rayne! Rayne! _Josef cried out into the night, but there was no response. Only darkness. The emptiness clawed at him. He didn't know who had her or where they'd take her. He missed her so desperately he didn't notice as Byron dissolved and drifted away.

He was alone. In that terrible moment, something roused, deep inside of him. Josef's fingers dug into the mossy earth, leaving deep furrows that looked like they belonged to a dangerous beast. Red clouded his vision, his incisors lengthened and he tasted his own blood in his mouth. He threw his head back and howled into the night. Josef was no longer the placid artist, or the benign hacker. He was a monster, consumed by darkness, crying for his lost mate.


	6. Chapter 6

_Bwahahaha! I know I am evil! But at least I got this chapter up sooner rather than later, so hopefully you weren't hanging in suspense too long. Please enjoy and review!_

_Song written and performed by _Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

_

* * *

_

**Dark Storm  
**

**Chapter 6**

"You are sure he intended to take her blood even against our laws?" Gregori growled. He, Mikhail, Byron, Jacques, and Raven met in the prince's library to discuss the gravity of Josef's situation.

"He admitted it twice," Byron replied unhappily.

"He went to extensive lengths to protect her from Carpathian and Vampire kind," Jacques interjected. "He knew we would object to their relationship and took every precaution possible to prevent our intervention."

"He believes Raviv is his lifemate, but that is impossible," Byron shook his head. "None of our kind have ever been mated that young."

"You mean none of our males," Raven snapped. "Our daughters have long been forced into partnerships with ancient men, and Mikhail was over 1000 years old when I met him."

"He is a Carpathian—not a human—and a very young one at that," Mikhail tried to sooth Raven's frazzled nerves, but he understood her ire. That his people would hold such a blatant double standard seemed wrong even to him, but he kept reminding himself of his own fledgling years and those of his friends'. Mastering simple things like shape shifting took decades. Developing control over all the Carpathian gifts needed time and diciplin. "Lifemates are rarely born so close together, and never before have they recognized each other before they came of age."

"So what?" Raven cried. "Maybe it was your ancient policy of gender segregation. You think that by keeping the women subdued and out of sight, you're protecting them—but if they never had a chance to meet their lifemates so young, then you can't say it will never happen. It's like saying the moon can't crash into the earth because it never has before. Well—DUH!" She threw her hands up in exasperation.

"Love," Mikhail said softly. "We have all lived for a long time, and we have seen youths become infatuated with human women before. We have seen tragedy result when guardians have not intervened. Our laws are not made without reason. It is more than likely that Josef has seen so many hunters find their lifemates and has convinced himself that he has as well, so as not to feel left out."

"Josef has always done extreme things to gain attention," Byron reminded her. "Do you not remember the piercings, the dyed hair, the _rap_?"

"Then how do you explain Raviv's depression?" Raven retorted softly. "I know that kind of misery—I've lived it. That kind of despair only comes from being separated from your lifemate."

"Her condition is regrettable," Gregori rumbled. "But I suspect it is the result of careful brainwashing. She will recover."

"Sometimes I just don't know what my daughter sees in you," Raven huffed and marched out of the room.

"Will Raviv recover?" Mikhail asked, concerned.

"As soon as I can access her mind, I will ensure it," Gregori replied, utterly confidant. "I may have to take her blood to do so, as her natural defenses are remarkable. Currently she is sleeping, and is not suffering."

All the men were silent for a moment, contemplating the enormity of Josef's near-crime.

"Mikhail," Jacques called, noticing something on his brother's computer screen. "Did you leave a chat room open?" The cutting edge machine was blinking rapidly in the corner, on the antique desk that Mikhail used when directing his business interests.

"I never chat," Mikhail replied, glancing over at the screen. A window was open and receiving chat text from someone named Hwan Yeong.

**_Hwan Yeong: This is my winter song to you._**  
**_Hwan Yeong: The storm is coming soon,_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: It rolls in from the sea_**

**_Hwan Yeong: My voice; a beacon in the night._**  
**_Hwan Yeong: My words will be your light,_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: To carry you to me._**

**_Hwan Yeong: Is love alive?_**

"Those are lyrics from a tune called Winter Song," Jacques said absently. "Shea loves the singers who wrote it, so I hear that track often. But who would send you this?"

"Perhaps it is merely an advertisement," Gregori suggested, but for the first time, he didn't sound sure. Using the mouse, he reached over and closed the chat box. Instantly it popped up again.

**_Hwan Yeong: They say that things just cannot grow_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: Beneath the winter snow,_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: Or so I have been told._**

**_Hwan Yeong: They say we're buried far,_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: Just like a distant star_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: I simply cannot hold._**

**_Hwan Yeong: Is love alive?_**

Gregori snorted with frustration and reached back to unplug the internet cable from the computer. Then he closed the chat box again. "The world wide web is a nuisance," he said gruffly.

"You have no idea," Jacques replied. Gregori and Mikhail heard the awe in his voice and turned back to the computer screen. The mysterious chat box was back and apparently receiving a live feed.

**_Hwan Yeong: This is my winter song._**  
**_Hwan Yeong: December never felt so wrong,_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: Cause you're not where you belong;_**  
**_Hwan Yeong: Inside my arms._**

"It is a virus," Gregori insisted and he flicked off the computer. The computer shut down, the monitor blinking out to black. "You should call Gary in the morning to fix it."

"I have the best anti-virus software money can buy," Mikhail responded, curiosity and censure filling his voice. "I am uncertain how Gary could do something more than that programming."

"Josef could," Byron said, suddenly still. "Josef could program computers with his mind. He did it often for Alexandra's games."

"You might be on to something," Jacques said, still staring at the monitor.

On the black screen, stark white words appeared, letter by letter, as if a ghost was typing them.

_**I still believe in summer days.**_  
_**The seasons always change**_  
_**And life will find a way**_.

Gregori reached down and ripped all the computer cords out of the wall, completely disconnecting the computer from all outside influence. Still, the white words glowed, the march of the typing uninterrupted.

**_I'll be your harvester of light_**  
**_And send it out tonight_**  
**_So we can start again._**

Byron 's fist flashed forward and punched through the monitor screen. Sparks flew and the words finally dimmed. "I will replace that," he muttered to the prince.

Mikhail waved a dismissive hand and instead focused on the real question. "How is one so young able to do so much?"

"I do not know," Byron replied honestly. "When I fought him, he had new and strange safeguards unlike anything I have ever seen before. He directed the elements without directing them. He moved without moving. At the time, I was more concerned with the atrocity he wanted to commit, it didn't occur to me that he may have found forbidden knowledge."

"Do we know how powerful he really is?" Gregori demanded.

Byron and Jacques looked at one another helplessly. "His biological parents were old and very traditional. Perhaps they imprinted more on him than is usual," Byron suggested.

"He was always such a rebel," Jacques remembered. "If anyone could find a different way to do something, it would be him."

"Mikhail?" Raven's voice called into the library. "Who is Hwan Yeong?" She walked in holding out her cell phone for the men to see the text message she had just received:

_**Is love alive?**_

* * *

Josef felt cold, but then that was all he felt these days.

After Rayne was taken from him, he had crawled to the deepest chamber in his basement and sobbed until the rising sun had driven his body into the sleep of his people. He didn't wake for a days, unwilling to face the pain of separation. When he did wake, it was within the internet. Somehow, suspended in cyberspace, the pain was manageable.

Josef raced through the fiber-optic lines, the phone lines, the power lines—any and every line that carried a byte of data. He was searching for Rayne. Surveillance cameras in and around the Palazzo didn't give a hint of Rayne's presence. Neither could he find evidence of Byron and Antonietta. He concluded that they had not yet returned.

He looked everywhere he could think of, until finally, he committed what could be an considered aggressive action against the prince of his people—even treason. Josef hacked into Mikhail's personal computer. He used Mikhail's own systems against him and overheard their conversation. The idea that Gregori would break into her mind—take her blood when Josef himself had abstained—infuriated him beyond all reason.

That was when Josef had sent his message. He chose a song Rayne had enjoyed during their week of paradise. Somehow, the words took on a cold, almost sinister meaning as he sent them to the small group of ancient Carpathians intent on keeping him separate from Rayne. Even after he lost the internet connection, he still transmitted his message, broadcasting the data and then, after the computer was turned off, the power cord ripped from the wall, enough energy to display his message. Josef knew in the back of his mind that the implied threat of his final text message to Raven could very well be his signature on his own death warrant.

He didn't care. The only thing that mattered was getting Rayne back. He was determined to travel back to the Carpathian mountains to reclaim her. Without her, he knew that he would be lost to the nightmare his parents and relatives feared.

When Josef pulled out of the internet, he was nearly crushed by depression. Only the thought of Rayne, alone and in danger of the Dark One, kept him moving as he carefully shut down his warehouse and sealed all the entry points. He couldn't touch her or see her, but he knew she was out there. She had to be. Then he took to the air and flew west.

* * *

Rayne fought the sleep. It was a compelled unconsciousness, that much she knew, and that was reason enough to fight it. The other times she woke up, someone had commanded it. She vaguely remembered Gregori and the prince, and the way she had begged to be taken back to Josef, sobbing inconsolably. She'd felt Gregori's terrifying presence on the edge of her mind, trying to gain access, but she flinched away from him. Then she was sent back to sleep.

She clawed her way through layers of fog, pushing back the fatigue. Then the stark loneliness hit her, and she wished she was still asleep.

_Get a hold of yourself,_ she scolded herself. _You won't get back to Bo if you're hysterical. _

She battled to pry her eyes open, even as tears streamed from under her lashes over her cheeks, but the room she was in was just as dark as the back of her eyelids. She listened so hard her ears started to ring. She held so still trying to feel the vibrations in the building that her muscles started cramping. With every breath she inhaled, she tried to gain some clue from the scents on the air.

She smelled the clinical air of a hospital mixed with the musty scent of rich soil. She tried to move her arms and felt the IV needle taped to her elbow. She wiggled her fingers and bare toes, trying to get feeling back in her limbs. She felt the thin cotton sheet stretched over a mattress hard enough to be hospital-issue. Using these clues, she tried to figure out who had kidnapped her.

Josef had said that his people had come for him, so she was probably in some creepy Carpathian's basement. A scientist perhaps? The original Dr. Frankenstein? She could tell she had been here for days, considering how numb her butt was, so the IV was probably a combination of nutrition and sedatives. What she wouldn't give for some sushi right now…

Rayne shook her head and tried to sit up—but she barely lifted her head when dizziness swamped her. She suddenly felt nauseous. With a groan and more instinct than willpower, she rolled to one side and fell onto the floor. Pushing herself up on hands and knees, she vomited bile.

Ugh. She hated drugs.

She clawed at her left arm and managed to pull out the needle without seeing it. She wiped her hand, sticky with her own blood, on her shirt. She felt disgusting in week-old clothes, now stained with blood and puke. She crawled backwards until she reached a wall. Cautiously, she stood. Her legs were weak and nearly gave out on her as she fumbled along the wall for a light switch.

She found it, flipped it, and the light nearly blinded her. She covered her face with a smothered cry of pain. Slowly, she allowed her fingers to part, letting in narrow beams of light until her eyes could adjust. When she could finally see, a beautiful red-headed woman stood in front of her, tapping her foot with impatience.

"You need to go back to sleep," she said softly.

"No," Rayne croaked. "I've been sleeping too long."

"It's the only way you'll survive," the woman warned. "Separation anxiety is no light thing."

"You think?" Rayne retorted sarcastically. "Gee, I've only been unconscious for who-knows-how-many days—long enough to need intravenous meals."

"That's for your own good," the woman said softly, hypnotically, as she stepped closer to Rayne.

"Hold your horses," Rayne growled, putting out a hand as if to halt the woman. "My good is my business. You need to go back to whatever garden you were napping in and stay there for a while."

The woman gave Rayne a dazzling smile, but that only made her mistrust this redhead even more. "At least let me give you a quick physical. Then you can get some real food to eat."

"I'm fine," Rayne insisted.

"You can hardly stand," the woman corrected gently.

"I said, _I'm fine,_" Rayne repeated testily. She was leaning heavily on the wall now. She wanted to run, but she didn't trust her legs to carry her. She was starving, now that she thought about it.

"Do I need to call Gregori?" the woman asked.

"NO!" Rayne cried. Not that silver-eyed monster. Not the one who wanted to raid her memories like some sort of psychic Viking.

"Then let me help you. You don't even have to sit on the table. You can have my rolling stool," the woman gently kicked the stool over to Rayne, who gratefully collapsed on the plush black leather seat. The woman walked carefully over to Rayne. "My name is Dr. Shea Dubinsky."

"You're related to the prince," Rayne muttered, trying to distract herself from the terror filling her systems. She missed Josef terribly, but she would not show it. Josef was the reason these people had taken her. When she'd showed her grief before, they'd sent her to sleep. If she kept it bottled up, maybe they would let her stay awake.

"By marriage," Shea confirmed. She looked over the young woman, her superior Carpathian eyes far more efficient than the most state of the art medical tools. All signs pointed to health, even if she looked tense. "Now, about breakfast; what would you like?"

"I don't suppose you have some salmon sashimi lying around?" Rayne asked with a brave attempt at a smile.

"No, I'm afraid not," Shea replied with an encouraging smile. "There isn't a sushi house for a hundred miles."

"No delivery," Rayne sighed. "Then maybe just some vegetable soup?"

"I think we can manage that," Shea replied. She helped the girl stand and walk out to the kitchen. She helped the girl sit at the table and quickly heated a can of soup for her. As she slid the bowl in front of the girl, she asked, "So, what's your name?"

"Raviv," Rayne replied. Best to stick with that name, since Byron had probably spread it around. No sense in giving them any more power over her. She quickly ate the soup, keeping her eyes down and focused on her meal.

"I should probably warn you that no one is very happy with Josef right now," Shea mentioned conversationally. "Enchanting you the way he did. I never thought of him as a player, but he's been through several strange stages in his youth, I suppose we should have seen it coming."

Rayne bit back a nasty retort. As if Josef could hold her against her will, like she was implying. The idea was laughable. "Well, at least he was more hospitable than the pirate lord who kidnapped me a few years ago," she replied, equally mellow. "Pirates are not known for well-stocked larders, so I had to work hard just for crusts of bread."

"Did they abuse you?" Shea asked gently, ready to console her if she was traumatized.

Rayne made an effort to chuckle naturally. "Oh, no. I fed them that classic mystic-looses-her-powers-if-she-looses-her-virginity line, so the captain guarded me like the crown jewels and treated me like a venomous snake. I just had to get them in and out of several ports undetected by local authorities, and then I faked losing my powers. There was a riot on the ship—everyone accusing everyone else—and I escaped in all the commotion."

"That was so brave of you," Shea said encouragingly.

"I'm a gypsy," Rayne stated simply. "We survive against all the odds."

"I bet you're excited about rejoining your caravan," Shea mentioned. "Once Gregori is satisfied with your health, we'll drop you off."

Rayne hesitated. "What about Josef?" she asked, hoping that her trembling voice made her sound afraid to be with him instead of being apart from him.

"Don't worry," Shea reassured her. "The greatest hunters of our time will ensure that he will never bother you again."

"You're not going to kill him…are you?" her voice sounded like a squeak.

"No, no," Shea denied. "They'll just…" She paused suddenly, her head tilted to one side as if she was listening to some far off voice. Then she sighed heavily. "He's coming."

Rayne's heart pounded. She didn't ask who. She knew. Josef.

* * *

Josef flew through the crags of the Carpathian mountains, casually dismissing the moonlit beauty around him. Only Rayne mattered. He could feel her now, her cool mind off in the distance giving him a small measure of peace. Still, the beast inside him raged for revenge. Behind Josef trailed a massive weather front, lightening cracking between boiling black clouds that blotted out the moon.

He landed in an open field far from any human or Carpathian dwelling. He could feel other Carpathian presences in the distance, quickly coming towards him. This would be the final confrontation. Josef did not want to be a "raider," skirmishing his own kind over and over while he tried to regain Rayne. He would leave with her tonight or he would die trying. It was that simple.

Unfurling his senses and flaring them into the stormy night, Josef took stock of his resources. Lightening and all kinds of precipitation from the clouds above. A river to his right. Decayed crags to his left. Soft, rich earth beneath the stubby grass under him. Air, fire, water and earth were all available to him and his enemies here.

They had centuries of practice, advanced battle strategies. Josef had only his unorthodox methods and the power of the beast inside him.

Josef waited patiently.

Finally, they arrived.

Mikhail in the lead, Gregori to his right, Jacques to his left. Byron loomed behind Jacques. Lucien stood passive as a glacier behind his younger brother.

"Stand down, young one," Mikhail ordered. Not a request or a suggestion, but a regal command.

"You know what I came for," Josef replied quietly. _Rayne! Rayne! Answer me!_

_I am in soooo much trouble!_ She cried fearfully. Relief washed through Josef. She was alive, awake. She was unharmed.

_Can you come to me?_ he wanted to know.

_No,_ she said regretfully. _Shea, Raven, and several other women are all guarding me just in case you escape the men. They watch me like a wayward teenager with a disreputable boyfriend._

That made Josef want to smile, but he kept expression clear from his face.

"You communicate with her," Mikhail stated. "Yet you must know this cannot continue."

"Would you pronounce death on me so soon?" Josef asked. "I mean, I always knew I'd eventually do something that really pissed you off, but that it only took 30 years is a marvel. I thought I would need a century at least to come up with the right prank."

"Is that what Raviv is to you?" demanded Gregori. "A prank?"

"She is my everything," Josef said honestly. "The prank was the message. Even this battle is a farce. You unjustly punish us both because you are unwilling to see the truth."

"It is you who will not see truth," Byron said softly. "You dishonor your family by pursuing her."

"It is you who dishonor me, uncle," Josef snapped, showing emotion for the first time. "You refuse to listen, to consider the possibility—"

"There is no possibility!" Byron roared.

"—and then you unjustly take her from me," Josef continued. "If I were a few hundred years older, your actions would be reprehensible. And yet because of my youth, you assume I do not know right from wrong, light from darkness, sanity from madness."

"You are a child—" Byron growled.

"Then why did you let me go to North Korea?" Josef demanded. "Why did you let Rayne follow me?"

"Because I didn't think you would succumb to such foolishness," Byron snapped. "You know our laws."

Josef sighed in frustration. It was the same as before. How could he prove himself to this group of ancients? He sat in the middle of the field, assuming the lotus position as if he was meditating. He let the storm gain fuel from his conflicted emotions. He needed Rayne, but he didn't want to even try to harm his uncle and especially not his prince—he had pushed Mikhail far enough as it was.

The only option he could conceive of was a fight—a display of force. He knew he could not win, but if he could convince them he was a force to contend with, maybe they would listen to him.

"Let us begin," Josef said.


	7. Chapter 7

Final Chapter, please savor and review. Thanks for enduring with me!

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* * *

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**Dark Storm  
**

**Chapter 7**

The earth trembled as 5 ancient Carpathians readied for battle. Josef closed his eyes and focused on his surroundings. Rocks flew out of the soil to orbit him like tiny satellites. Lightning flashed down from the clouds, arching between the crystals revealed in the rocks, and enveloped Josef in a sphere of light. He was like the center of a giant plasma ball. Stinging sleet and hale rained from the storm onto the ancients even as they dissolved to avoid the missiles.

Josef left his body protected by the arching lightning and used his power to churn up the winds. In mist form, wind was their one vulnerability. Josef felt the vibrations of four of them in the air. Lucien he could not track and he could not distinguish between Mikhail and Gregori or between Jacques or Byron, but he sensed their approximate locations in the air. They were hesitant to strike at him with their full force—he was only a youth after all. Josef consoled himself that they were probably much stronger than he, even individually, so his odds of actually harming them _en mas_ were remote.

Gale force winds blew the ancients back from Josef's impressive display of lightning mastery. Four of the ancients dropped out of the air and into wolf form. Josef shifted the balance inside the storm so that instead of rain or hale, snow fell like a thick wool blanket over the landscape. In moments, what had once been dark green and brown was bright white and reflecting the blinding light of his lightning ball, turning the world into stark black and white shapes. Josef used the snow to raise a pack of snow wolves. The white creatures attacked the ancients with icy teeth, only to dissolve into the blizzard when the ancients bit back. Josef focused most of his power on the wind keeping it howling, the hollow sound echoing the call of the beast inside him.

Byron pushed the gusts of air back with cross winds while Jacques directed long barbs of ice at Josef's ball of energy in an effort to short it out. The missiles sizzled as they encountered the sparking ball of pure energy. Gregori peeled away the earth from around Josef's pedestal. Josef's body was unshaken, a slim tower of rock impervious to Gregori's efforts. Mikhail called the river to fill the chasm and wear away at the column of rock Josef was holding onto. The earth under Josef rose up, pushing him high into the sky and closer to the lightening. The ball glowed brighter.

Drawing strength from the beast inside him, Josef redoubled his attack, his essence flitting out in a hundred directions to direct the elements while his body sat passive and protected, acting as bait for the ancients. Josef called winds from the upper reaches of the storm, bitter cold and powerful, to combat those that Byron pushed. He convinced the lightning that the rocks orbiting him were the most delicious conductors in the area, and then drew from the crystals raw energy to fuel the winds. He had essentially created a storm generator, which his body at its core.

Even with the extra energy from the lightning, Josef was wearing out quickly. Even as he fought four foes, he looked frantically for the fifth. Lucien, he knew, could destroy him in a moment.

_Josef! HELP!_ cried Rayne.

_What's wrong?_ he demanded, snapping back to his body. The lightning crackled around him wildly.

_It's the Caravan. They've come for me!_ Her voice was panicked, and he sensed that she was frantically looking for a way out, trying to escape the Carpathian woman as much as the Gypsies.

_Maybe if you go with them, we can meet somewhere else,_ Josef suggested.

_NO! They won't allow it. I'm Gram's successor, remember? They'll bind me to the Caravan and I'll never, ever be able to leave. I can't step one foot on a wagon or I'll never see you again,_ she cried in fear.

_I'll find you,_ he vowed.

_Not if they find me first,_ she replied. He could feel her terror clawing at him. _They use old magics, absolute magics, passed down for centuries. You can't unweave them. They have no loopholes. I'd rather die than be bound apart from you._

_I'm coming!_

Josef recalled all his extended powers and flew, still within the ball of lightning, streaking like a comet towards Rayne. His intent was to break free of the ancient attackers and race towards his lifemate. He only managed a few feet before he hit an invisible barrier. Somehow the wall sucked the lightning into it, and with it all his power. Josef crumpled and fell 50 feet to the ground. He lay momentarily in agony and despair, his body bruised, his energy gone, the love of his life beyond his reach.

A hand gripped his shoulder. The animal in Josef reacted and he bit it, sinking his teeth deep into the flesh.

_Drink, young one,_ Lucien said calmly, serenely. _There is much to do and little time to do it in if we are going to save your lifemate._

Josef almost choked on the rich, powerful blood, but to refuse such an offering would be gravely insulting. _You believe me?_ he asked, his mental voice sounding harsh and desperate compared to Lucien's hypnotically pure tones.

_The beast in you is strong, stronger than it should be at your age, yet you retain your colors and emotions. I can feel Rayne holding you to the light. No fantasy can do that. I, of all the ancients, would know that best, _he replied.

Josef gratefully drank enough for an exchange, his veins roaring with the raw power of the eldest's blood. Then he respectfully closed the puncture marks. He stood slowly, then hesitantly held out his own wrist. It was redundant, since Lucien could track anyone with or without a blood bond, but Josef didn't know what other gesture he could offer to thank the Ancient for his faith. Lucien politely sank his fangs into it, but took only a tiny amount.

_Your mental barriers are remarkable. In all my countless centuries, I have not seen the like,_ Lucien complimented him as they finished the exchange.

_They're computer programs_, Josef admitted a little sheepishly. _Modified binary code._

"Lucien," Mikhail interjected warningly. "You would support Josef's pursuit of Raviv?"

"She is his lifemate," Lucien declared in clear and ringing tones.

"Why would one so young find his mate when other ancient hunters languish in darkness?" Gregori demanded. "He is too young to even be familiar with the darkness. I doubt he has even met a vampire."

"They haunt the internet, you know," Josef piped up meekly. All eyes turned with interest to him. "Not just the internet but the closed defense networks. Last month, one tried to nuke the entire mountain range. I…um…I stopped him."

"How?" Mikhail wanted to know, his voice low and powerful.

"I incinerated him using the electrical system of the building he was in," Josef replied. "The vampires have been trying to destroy Carpathian mountains for a while—surface to air missiles, falling space junk, economic collapse—the nuke was just the most desperate attempt so far. And before that, I stopped shipments of biological weapons to vampires and terrorist groups alike, fowled attempts to destroy the world banking system, and corrected some of the formulas for genetically manipulating wheat. The original formulas would have decimated world crops with an incurable fungus."

The ancients looked at one another in shock, then looked at Lucien.

"He speaks the truth," Lucien stated simply.

"How did you gain this knowledge?" Gregori demanded, suspicious.

"How much time do you spend online?" Josef responded. "Two, maybe three hours a day? I spent almost a solid year online, and before that I was programming games and consoles with my mind. I lived and breathed computer programming, from the most complex protocol to essential binary code. Just like you can change your physical form into molecules of mist, I can bend my mind into code and jump between different systems and lines. I can read digital code faster than you can read an ancient book. I know almost everything on the internet _and _on international defense systems."

"He can shed his body with remarkable ease," Lucien remarked. "During the battle, he was not actually in his physical form. I sensed him reaching out with remarkable scope. This young one feels the weight of darkness before his time, and yet honorably finds ways to defend and protect his people. Do not let his age fool you. His knowledge is extensive."

Josef wanted to blush, but he was filled with anxiety for Rayne. He could feel her fear reverberating through him.

"Is there anything you are not accomplished at?" Gregroi asked a little sarcastically.

"Absolutely," Josef replied. "Tons of stuff. I'll be more than happy to list all my faults, flaws, and shortcomings if we can get to Rayne before the gypsies take her away forever."

"She is safe in my home," Jacques insisted. "No one can get through the wards I have placed on it."

"What if someone invites a harmless old lady inside for a cup of tea and to see her granddaughter?" Josef replied coldly.

Jacque's eyes narrowed. "We should go. Now."

All five ancients shifted into mist and streaked away. Josef sighed. He'd never mastered shifting to mist, and now one of his many shortcomings was evident. He sensed that Lucien was willing to help him achieve the transformation, but Josef decided to do things his own way. He sped on foot through the forests towards Jacque's house. His spirit reached out ahead of his body and reached the house before the ancients.

He felt Rayne's terror as Gram Yagmur reached one bony hand towards her. Working through his connection with Rayne, Josef called the electricity out of the wall sockets. A flash of light arched through the air to intercept Gram's gnarled claw. With a hiss of pain, she recoiled. Josef snapped back into his body, only moments from the door.

Rayne looked aghast at Gram's shocked hand, but she knew it was Josef protecting her. She felt him inside her mind and somehow more powerful than before.

"Come, child. Ve are leaving," Gram growled, shaking her numb hand.

"No, Gram," Rayne denied. "I'm not going back. I've been grounded."

"Zat is impossible. You are my heir, my successor. No-zing can ground you. You _are_ ze caravan, my dear, its very soul. Ve cannot go on wizout you," Gram reminded her.

"You'll have to find another heir," Rayne insisted. "I'm not leaving."

Gram turned to Shea. "I tot you said she vas troo viz dis Yosef boy," she grumbled. "But it appears he still holds power over her."

"I said she was doing better," Shea replied carefully. Raven stood behind her, dark and disapproving, Antoinette to one side, also suspicious. All three women sensed the power in the old crone, as well as something shady, and were hesitant to cross her unnecessarily.

"She is welcome to stay as long as she wants," Raven interjected tartly.

"She cannot stay," Gram insisted. "She haz responsibilitiez elze-vere."

"Responsibilities I never wanted!" Rayne cried. She could feel Josef getting closer and closer. Soon, his arms would wrap around her and she'd be safe. She just had to stay out of Gram's reach that long. "You just assumed I'd take them on."

"Ze caravan must have a strong psychic for its matriarch," Gram snapped. "You are ze only one ve have found zese many years."

"Find yourself another," Rayne retorted hotly. "If a bunch of cavemen-Carpathians can manage to find two or three women a year, you can find one measly little psychic to read your bones when you die."

"I was always curious what sort of bones she read," Byron commented smoothly as he entered the room. Jacques and Mikhail were at his side, Lucien and Gregori behind him.

Rayne looked frantically around for Josef but couldn't see him. Her heart sank to her toes.

_I am here, you simply cannot see me,_ Josef assured her. _The prince wishes to know more about the Caravan's needs and abilities before we make them an eternal enemy._

Gram scowled at the entorage of powerful men. Where she could intimidate the women, the men would not hesitate to confront her. "Ze bones are very peculiar about who zey chooze to read zem. You, my dear girl, have the blood of six continents and the ocean of the world in you. Ze bones also come from zese places. You match. Zere is no ozer like you in ze entire world—ve have looked."

"When you say six continents and an ocean, what do you mean exactly?" Gregori asked, his voice melodious and dark.

"She means I have all the races in my parentage," Rayne said sourly. "I'm a Heinz-57 variety of human, lycan, jaguar, merfolk, and Carpathian."

Stunned silence greeted this announcement. Every Carpathian in the room was trying to quickly trace her heritage.

"Are you one of Razvan's children?" Jacques wondered out loud, speaking for all of them.

"How should I know?" Rayne demanded. "Whoever fathered one of my grandmothers did it a long time ago and didn't leave a calling card."

"If you were of Razvan's line, you would have a dragon shaped birthmark over your left ovary," Shea replied softly.

"Then, nope, I'm not," Rayne replied, jerking up her shirt to reveal her hip, void of any mark.

"Then who else could have…" Raven wondered.

"Rand?" Shea suggested, excitement in her voice. "Could he have fathered yet another child?"

"No," Mikhail replied gently. "We searched out every woman your father ever slept with in hopes of finding some other child to bring into our fold, but we found nothing."

Shea's face fell.

"The first time I read the bones," Rayne volunteered hesitantly, "They told me that my biological great-grandfather was a dark bard."

"A Dark Troubadour, perhaps?" Gregori offered, his voice carefully neutral.

"Maybe. I don't care," Rayne insisted. "I'm not giving up Josef to spend my life fortunetelling."

"You know zat is not all ve do," Gram snarled at her heir.

"Oh, right, we foretell everything and nothing, and then we watch the world's fate unfold as if it was a Saturday-Night-Live skit," Rayne snapped back. "You know I _hate_ watching them suffer. Yet you ask me to do it over and over."

"It is not your place to interfere!" Gram berated her.

"Then it isn't my place to know," Rayne retorted. "Knowledge without action is dead, and I refuse to live like that."

Gram Yagmur was getting obviously perturbed. She puffed herself up to her full five feet, her jewelry jangling irritably. "You also must protect ze Caravan. Vizout you, zey are vulnerable—"

"I don't give a selkie's arse!" Rayne screamed. "The Caravan did quite well without me before you discovered my stealth skills. And let's not forget that those skills are much coveted between you and the Pirates and the Desert Nomads and every other group of wanders who don't want the modern world finding out about them."

"Child," Gram snapped.

"I'm _not_ a child to be ordered around! I'm 28 for pity's sake," she almost screamed.

Gram patted the air in front of her, trying to sooth Rayne and bring down the volume of the fight. "Ve shood not be talking about ze buizness of ze Caravan in front of zes strangers."

"They're not strangers," Rayne said defiantly. "Some of them are my family!"

"Ze Caravan is your family!" Gram shrieked.

"That is my Uncle Byron and Aunt Toni," Rayne declared, pointing. "There is my doctor. That is my prince—the only one besides my lifemate who can command anything of me."

"Vhere vere vey when you were born?" Gram demanded. "Ve took you in when your mother died—"

"—Giving birth to me in a rainstorm," Rayne finished. "You've told me that a hundred times. And hundred times I've repaid your kindness by helping you slip in and out of the guarded corners of the world, by protecting you from greedy eyes, by reading the bones and warning you about the danger. I've cloaked and glamoured my way through life taking on a hundred names and a hundred faces—from beggars in Paris to royalty in Thailand to scientists for the Morrison foundation to mythical sirens on the beaches of Greece—all for the sake of the Caravan! I'm exhausted from living up to your expectations of me. Why can't you just let me go in peace?"

"You are my heir," Gram cried. "I am near ze end und you must soon take your rightful place in ze Caravan." The woman lunged for Rayne. Suddenly Josef was in front of her, stoically baring the old woman's progress. With a shriek of rage, she slapped him for his impertinence, her long nails clawing 4 red streaks across his face.

Josef stood impassively, staring the woman in the eye. He let her contemplate what she had done to him in the presence of so many ancients. The room hummed with disapproval, and Josef took no small amount of pleasure in the fact that it wasn't aimed at him.

"Get out ov my vay!" Gram ordered, trying to regain her dignity.

"Rayne is _mine,_" Josef declared for all to hear. "She came to me of her own free will. We are married."

Gram hissed in annoyance. She turned to the prince. "Are you going to allow him to take my heir from me? A fledgling barely out of his diapers?"

"There is no taking," Mikhail said simply. "And his age has nothing to do with this."

Gram's eyes narrowed as her gaze swung back to Josef and Rayne, who was peeping over his shoulder with triumph in her eyes. "Zen you owe me," she growled.

"You wish to trade for Rayne?" Josef asked softly, lifting one eyebrow sarcastically. "I was not aware gypsies still traded in human flesh."

"You take my heir, you owe me a new vone," Gram stated logically. "Your first born should do nizely—a strong psychic to guard our Caravan."

Suddenly darkness filled the room. Every Carpathian male seemed larger, more menacing. They surrounded Gram Yagmur with red flames burning in their eyes. For the first time, the old woman quailed in fear.

"You go too far, old hag. We do not give up our children," Mikhail decreed. "Not for anyone or anything. You have no say in Rayne's life. She is of age to make her own choice. Accept that and leave."

The woman hunched into herself, as if to make herself smaller, and fled out the door.

"My hero!" Rayne cried joyfully as she flung her arms around Josef. She kissed his cheek and his winced.

"You were impressive," Antonietta compliment him as she came out from behind Byron. "But your face—let me take care of that."

"Aunt Toni," Josef moaned as Antonietta gently took his face between her hands and licked the first welt left by Gram Yagmur's claws. Her saliva instantly soothed the burning and healed the skin.

"Are we Carpathian or aren't we?" she demanded and licked the second welt.

"I'd rather have it scar," Josef muttered rebelliously. Byron shook his head, smiling to himself. That was the Josef he remembered. Still, Byron couldn't help but be impressed with his nephew's discipline and restraint when Gram Yagmur attacked him. Byron doubted he could have been so calm if it was Antonietta the hag had wanted to whisk away.

_I wish I could do that for you,_ Rayne whispered in his mind.

_I wish you could too. This is just embarrassing,_ Josef confessed.

_Then will you convert me?_ Rayne asked.

Josef sighed, his heart aching. _Is it truly what you want?_

_Yes. Gram will come back unless my link with the Caravan is completely severed—unless I'm of no use to her, _Rayne explained. _The bones won't work for me if I'm pure Carpathian._

_I will ask the prince's permission,_ Josef replied. _He and some of the other ancients may need to help, as my blood may not be strong enough to convert you._

_Then I guess we gotta do what we gotta do,_ she said.

"Josef, will you come with me?" Mikhail asked, inviting him to an adjoining room. Josef squeezed Rayne's hand one last time before following his prince. In the next room, Mikhail sealed the door and windows against prying ears. Josef's ears rang with the lack of outside sound. Mikhail turned to him and eyed him appraisingly. "Lucien has informed me about your circumstances. It appears that you have truly found your lifemate at a very young age. It would be cruel of me to insist on your separation until the proper age. And as my wife has pointed out, we have made a habit of accepting young females as lifemates, where our males are usually centuries older. However, I want you to understand the position this puts me in. There have been times when young Carpathian males have fixated on a human who was not their lifemate, and the consequences were disastrous."

Josef felt the memories projected from Mikhail's mind; fledgling Carpathians who didn't know what they were doing turned genuinely good and pure human women into vile vampiresses. Families were decimated, both human and Carpathian. Communities were overrun with fear and superstition.

"I can see why you were concerned," Josef said, humbly. "Truthfully, I knew that it would be difficult to convince you that I hadn't broken our laws by taking her blood, and so I restrained myself."

"You behaved admirably. Even when you fought us for your lifemate, it was a show of power, not a malicious attack. It was impressive for one so young," Mikhail said. "But now that we know that Raviv—or, as you call her, Rayne—is truly your lifemate, we do not want your union to set a bad precedent."

"I beg your pardon, but wouldn't it be encouraging to our young males to know that it is possible to find a lifemate so early?" Josef interrupted. "I know many of the youths feel like only the ancients have earned lifemates—some of them through trickery or black magic. They fear waiting through unknown centuries of darkness before they too have the knowledge and power to obtain a woman."

Mikhail considered this. "I can see your point. We have been losing young males to the darkness even though we are discovering more lifemates. I thought perhaps the hope from the elders' examples would make a difference, but it seems to have had the opposite effect."

"I've read some vampire propaganda on the internet," Josef admitted. "They claim that the human lifemates are your greatest deception, that you turn our own laws on their heads to try to preserve the race through false hope. One claimed that the Carpathian race is doomed, no matter how many women you turn, and the 'new' Carpathian race is one that lives wholly in darkness."

"Where do you find this knowledge?" Mikhail wondered.

"Same place I find everything else," Josef shrugged. "The internet. I can show you if you like." Mikhail nodded. Josef went over to the laptop that Mikhail had been using since Byron had put his fist through the computer monitor. Without him touching it, the laptop turned on and started flitting through encoded web pages.

Mikhail watched in awe as Josef stood unmoving, his mind deep in the bowels of the internet. "Remark—"

Josef held up one finger for silence, his eyes glazed as his spirit was concentrating on something distant. "Let me just cancel that and turn it around and…there!" He brought up an image on the computer. "Yesterday, a vampire going by the screen name RasputinTheFourth put a 10 million Euro bounty on your head, with specific instructions that killing any women near you would get a 4 million Euro bonus."

"WHAT?" Mikhail raged.

"I took care of it," Josef quickly assured him. "RasputinTheFourth is now the most wanted man on the internet, and I have mini-bounties for just tracking his whereabouts."

"You did this all in a few seconds?" Mikhail asked, unbelieving.

"Yes," Josef replied, blushing. "But really, it the networks I work with that do most of the leg work. Even though I spend most of my time online, the internet is a big place—and vampires have an uncanny way of hiding in the strangest spots, although most prefer porn sights."

"Porn sights?" Mikhail repeated, unbelieving.

"You have no idea how many subliminal messages are in porn," Josef replied, disgusted. "They prey on simple carnality and slowly twist the minds of innocent young men until they think all the citizens of the world are their playthings."

Mikhail shook his head. "I am relieved we have you on our side, hopefully for many centuries to come."

"About that," Josef hedged. "I was wondering if…you could help me—that is help Rayne—"

"She must be converted for her own safety," Mikhail nodded. "And she is willing?"

"Yes."

"Then we can begin this evening. I believe Lucien would like to provide the first exchange. It seems you have done something to impress him," he said.

Josef turned pink for the second time in a few minutes.

"Come, there is much to do this night," Mikhail gestured out of the room.

* * *

Josef woke deep in the earth with Rayne in his arms. He was still trembling from the force of her conversion. Over the course of three days, Lucien, Byron and Mikhail had all exchanged blood with Rayne. The pain that had overtaken Rayne's entire system had been far worse than anything Josef had been prepared for. Rayne persevered, holding on to him physically and mentally while the convulsions shook her body.

Now she lay in his arms, as still as death, her olive skin nearly translucent. Josef rose from the soil with Rayne held close to his heart. He gently placed her on the bed provided by his uncle. The small cabin sanctuary all belonged to Byron, and he had generously let the couple use it while they recovered from the conversion. Josef carefully cleared away every speck of dirt before waking her.

She moaned and it nearly broke his heart. Then she stretched and opened her eyes. She smiled. "So," she sighed. "This is what it feels like to be immortal."

Relief flooded Josef's heart and made his legs weak. He kissed her. He couldn't help himself. She was the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the entire world. They made love, for the first time exchanging blood in the process. She tasted wild and exotic and sweet, far better and more addictive than anything he could have imagined. She tasted him for the first time, taking sustenance as a true Carpathian lifemate. The beauty of this first true mating brought tears to both their eyes.

They were spent and glowing with endorphins when there was a polite knock on the door. Josef and Rayne looked at each other and exchanged a slightly guilty smile. Then they quickly dressed, using some of the garments Byron had stocked the cabin with. When they opened the door, Barak and Syndil stood, looking grave and serious.

"May we come in?" Barak asked, his voice harsh.

"Yes, please," Josef waved them into the cabin.

Barak caught sight of Rayne and looked down. Syndil's lips tightened into a thin line.

"What's the matter?" Rayne asked in her soft, sweet voice.

"Mikhail told me that—Well, since you were part Carpathian—I mean now that you're wholly Carpathian—It's just that—" Barak struggled to speak.

"The prince informed us that Barak might be your biological great grandfather," Syndil curtly informed them. Josef and Rayne exchanged a look. Syndil continued, "You see, he was something of a playboy in the centuries before he claimed me. It was confusing for all of us—he didn't even realize we were meant to be together until 60 years ago, and I didn't catch on until about 9 years ago."

Rayne looked at Barak critically. She could see the pain in his heart, that his unknowing betrayals of Syndil in the years before they were mated had somehow resulted in a child—the one thing he wanted with her but had not yet achieved. He also felt guilty at the idea of leaving a child of his loins to grow up without a father.

"You're not related to me," Rayne declared. "When I read the bones, I was looking for some lasting member of my biological family. The bones told me he was a dark bard that had been lost. They also said that my grandmother's conception had been an act of jealousy, that there had been no love in the union."

It was Barak and Syndil's turn to exchange a knowing glance. "Savon," Syndil whispered, her voice made harsh with remembered pain.

"Perhaps," agreed Rayne. "But quite honestly, it could have been any musically talented Carpathian who since turned vampire. That's the thing about the bones—they're very rarely _truly_ specific. I mean, you'd think _conceived without love, sired by a dark bard who fell to darkness_ would narrow it down a bit, but it's my _great-grandmother_ we're talking about. I didn't even know my biological mom, much less anyone else who comes from a gene pool remotely similar to mine. From what I've seen of Carpathian men so far, they all have dark hair and fair-to-olive skin. I think the _only_ people you can rule out as my genetic predecessors are the dark twins—because they were in the ground at the time, the dragonseekers—because I don't bear their mark, and the golden twins Aiden and Julian—because, well, they're blond and I'm totally not."

Barak looked increasingly relieved as Rayne spoke. Even Syndil seemed more at peace as Rayne explained the lack of certainty. It would have been difficult for both of them if Barak was somehow a forefather, and it would have haunted Syndil if her rapist of old had somehow left progeny in the world. Rayne's calm logic soothed their fears, even if it didn't totally extinguish them.

"Any way you slice it," Rayne concluded. "There's no way to know and I honestly don't care. I have a family and I'm quite happy with it. I'd love to be friends with you—I've always admired the Troubadour's music. Maybe we could have a jam session or something."

Josef smiled. "My wife is quite talented on the mandolin."

"That would be fun," Syndil agreed, looking cheerful and hugging Barak's arm close.

"We'll need to do it soon, because Josef and I are going back to North Korea," Rayne reminded her.

"Why do you like that forsaken corner of the world?" Barak asked. Syndil smacked his arm for his rudeness.

"The people there need us," Rayne said simply, grinning from ear to ear. "And it's nice to be needed—not demanded."

"Besides, we're going to be invited to a wedding as soon as we get back," Josef interjected.

"Really?" Rayne clapped her hands excitedly. "Is it Lieu? Is she marrying the guy I donated blood too?"

"That is the plan," Josef replied. "And I need to get back in time to give her a wedding dress for White Day."

"But White Day was yesterday!" Rayne cried in dismay.

"Lieu will forgive me," Josef said confidantly. "I'm her baby's godfather—which makes you a godmother now!"

"You certainly have your hands full," Syndil laughed. "Let's get out of your hair so you can get some work done." With a wink, she dragged Barak out of the small cabin leaving the young lovers alone.

"So, are you ready to go see the prince as a full carpathian?" Josef asked.

"Maybe," Rayne said, looking longingly at the door.

"What's wrong?" Josef asked. Even though they had exchanged blood and could slip in and out of each other's minds at will, know each other secret thoughts, he still liked to ask and receive her comments as a treasured gift.

"I kinda wish he was my great grandpa," Rayne sighed. "It would have been nice, I think. Just to have someone who felt a bit paternally responsible for me."

"What, is my dad not good enough for you?" he teased. "What about my mom? Or your new brother-in-law? You have a huge family, and I can't think of a single Carpathian who wouldn't want to be close friends with you."

"You're right," Rayne sighed happily. "I love our family."


	8. Chapter 8

_Interlued..._

* * *

Josef and Rayne flew over the familiar jungle in the familiar night of Northern Korea together. They had taken human means to South Korea and drifted over no man's land wrapped up in each other's arms, not in any shape but their true shape, and shielding themselves from any forlorn eyes that turned up to the starry skies.

As they got closer to the village, Josef reached out to all the blood bonds that he had created only to find nothing there. Concern and a little fear prickled down his spine and he put on a burst of speed even as he held his lifemate tighter. When they were a few miles from the village, their heightened senses of smell picked up a bouquet of scents that turned their stomachs. Fire and smoke. Burned and rotting bodys. Death. Fear. Despair. And lots of blood.

They landed in the center of what had been the village. The building had been burned several days earlier. Charred corpses cast shadows in the moonlight. Surveying the damage, both young carpathians wept openly at the pointless loss of life. Josef felt shaken to his core. These were his people, under his protection. They weren't even the high-profile dependants that some of the other Carpathians took under their wings. These were poor farmers, most of them illiterate, all of them worn into submission to the government and their terrorist soldiers. Who would do this?

Another, careful examination of the village revealed the answer: a vampire.

Somehow, a vampire had found his village and had put it to the torch as a message to him. Josef was certain of it. There was no other explanation; he had brought the vampire here.

Rayne, ever a shadow in his thoughts put a comforting hand against his cheek and whiped away his blood red tears. _It could have equally been my doing,_ she insisted. _It came right after I did. You were with these people, fighting the vampire behind the scenes for over a year and nothing came then. It only came after I drew you away._

_It is not your fault, either,_ Josef insisted, pulling her close and burring his face in her hair. He took comfort in her smell, in this last good thing. _Something evil came here with no other purpose than doing evil. We were just the excuse._

_Let's go home,_ she insisted. _Let's figure it out in the comfort of home._

Josef nodded his agreement and launched them both into the air. In a few moments, they landed in his garden. The warehouse was oddly untouched. Josef tested his defenses and found them strong. Apparently, his grief over Rayne had amplified his power when he had set the safeguards just before he left to reclaim her. As his senses explored every nook and cranny of his haven before he physically entered it, he found three people.

Three survivors of the tragedy.

They were huddled together just inside his front door, their hearts laboring under the forbidding oppression of his safeguards. One was Lieu. The other was so small it must be her baby. The third was unknown, but looking through Lieu's eyes, he saw the man that he had healed for her sake, Bae. As soon as he was aware of them, he shifted his spells to exclude them.

"Someone survived," he whispered to Rayne, relaying their identities in a flash of thought. "Let's greet them and find out how this happened."

They found the three of them, huddled against the wall. Bae held Lieu close and stroked her hair with a fumbling hand, his eyes glazed with fatigue and extreme hunger. Lieu clutched her babe to her chest, as if she didn't have the strength to detach him from her breast. Even Cais was alarmingly quiet for a babe on the brink of starvation.

"Oh my goodness!" Rayne cried and rushed forward. Josef was right behind her and carefully they helped the pair to their feet, Josef helping Bae with his bandaged leg and Rayne carrying Cais for Lieu, even as she helped the girl lean on her shoulder. Together, they lead them towards the stairwell.

"No!" Leiu protested, her speech slurred. "Evil...evil lurks..."

"It is nothing," Josef assured her. He knew she was wary only of his banished safeguards and not from some cloaked malevolence. He had triple checked his underground chamber and all the earth around his warehouse, all too aware that a vampire or one of their minions could be hiding near his haven. Lieu didn't have the strength to fight anymore, and Rayne and Josef managed to get them to the large queen bed in the basement bedroom.

"Go get the medical kit and all the saline you can carry," he instructed Rayne. "They need fluids and they need them fast."

She nodded and ran upstairs to the storage room as fast as a wind. Neither Carpathian bothered concealing who they were. They had received extensive mental training while in the Mountains about how to manipulate human minds. Some of the ancients didn't believe that the youngest mated pair should be allowed such unchecked freedom, but ultimately it wasn't their choice, so they had compensated for their uncertainty with a plethora of knowledge. Rayne was back quickly, carrying the medical kit and a large box full of bags of saline solution.

Kneeling beside their patients, Josef let Rayne see the directions for setting up the IV in his mind. Rayne inserted the needle into Lieu's arm and set up the IV drip. She did the same for little Cais, who, even though he was large for a poor Korean baby was still only a year old and very vulnerable. Josef took care of Bae's IV and added pain and antibiotic medication to the mixture. Bae's leg had been repairing, but the movement during his flight had taken its tole and infection had set in. After the IV was set up, Josef freed his spirit from his body and entered Bae's to burn away the worst of the infection with healing light. After ensuring that Bae didn't have gangrene or blood poisoning, his spirit skipped to Cais and then to Lieu to make sure that dehydration was the worst of their troubles.

Finally, he settled back in his own body and sat back on his heels. All three were on the road to recovery. It would be at least five hours until they were fully hydrated again, and longer before they could be debriefed. But he had to find out who had attacked _his_ village, and then he would make them pay.


End file.
